Hattie did not sleep that night. She fed Ellen when the baby woke, but did not play with her as she usually did. As a consequence, Ellen fussed and refused to sleep until very late. It didn't matter, though, for Hattie had much thinking to do.

In the end it was easy to make her decision. She rose long before dawn and walked into the meadow, wetting her bare feet, shivering in the morning cold.

She watched the sky in the gap turn lavender, then pink as the sun rose somewhere behind the mountains to the east. Come winter there would be little sun reaching Cherry Vale, for there were tall hills to the south as well. If she had her directions right, there would be no winter sunlight in the meadow until near noon, but it would linger there until late afternoon.

She envisioned the meadows white with snow. In her mind's eye, she watched the snow pile up in deep drifts, then melt, time and again, until at last it melted one last time and the grass grew tall and green once more.

She thought of the elderberry bushes, heavy with fruit, nearly ready to harvest.

And of her grapevines--a hardy variety she'd first brought from New York--growing unattended until they were choked by the vining blackberries.

Would the black walnut grow tall and straight, or would it die in this new land, unable to adapt?

And the lilac, which had just yesterday put forth two tiny leaves, promises for tomorrow. Would someone come here in a future year and see that once a woman had cared enough about this isolated valley that she planted her flowers--and her heart--here?

If Emmet were taking her with him because he could not bear to leave her, she would go without a backward glance. But he was not, and she would not.

Emmet saw her walk back up the rise and enter the cabin. He was about to follow her when he saw her emerge again with William. They walked to the east and soon disappeared into the woods. She must be going to bathe and had asked William to stand guard.

Silas was jogging Ellen on his knee when Emmet brought in the milk. William and Hattie had been gone a full hour now and he was getting worried.

"Sure hope Hat'll be back soon. This little one's gettin' mighty hungry."

"She didn't feed her?" Emmet couldn't remember Hattie ever leaving Ellen before her morning feeding.

"Nope. Just stuck her head in here, asked William to go for a walk, and told me to listen for the babe."

Just then Ellen whimpered and Emmet took pity on Silas. He was clearly not comfortable caring for the baby. "Hush, little one," he soothed, taking her and giving her a knuckle to gum. He wouldn't be surprised if she wasn't getting set to cut a tooth or two. She seemed about the right age, if Emmet remembered right.

Ellen was content for a while, but soon she was again fussing. Where the hell was that woman?

Hattie and William came in before Ellen's cries could turn into full-blown wails. She took the baby and turned her back while she set her to breast. When she turned back, a scrap of cloth covered her bare breast and Ellen's head.

Sitting quietly on the bench at the foot of her bed, she seemed to ignore them, concentrating entirely on her child.

Emmet could not remember her ever being quite so modest before. Perhaps it was because Silas was here?

William fried up some bacon and browned the rest of last night's bread in the grease as it cooked. With cups of fresh, warm milk, it was a delicious breakfast. They ate in silence, except when he offered to take a plate to Hattie.

"No thank you," she said quietly. "I'll just have some milk."

He set a cup beside her and she nodded her gratitude.

When Emmet had scraped the last bite from his wooden plate--another of William's contributions--he reached for the coffeepot.

"I've thought about what you said last night," Hattie said, startling him so that he splashed coffee on the hearth, where it sizzled. "And I've talked to William about it." She stroked a finger across Ellen's head, now covered with short, silky blond hair. "We're staying."

"Good. We'll start.... What did you say?"

"We're staying. William and I. This is our home."

"This is our kingdom, Mist' Em. Mine and Miz Hattie's. You can't 'spect us to jest go off and leave it behind."

He sat straighter as he spoke and Emmet saw that the shy, unsure slave he'd pulled from the ice-choked Boise River last winter had become a man. A strong man who knew his own mind.

Hattie reached out a hand and took William's, ivory skin against ebony. He stepped closer until he stood at her side.

"You've done what you promised, Emmet," she said, "and I'll never be able to thank you enough. But this is where I... we belong, William and me."

"But you're my wife!" It was a futile objection, but the only one he had.

"We never meant for it to last," she said, and Emmet heard sorrow and regret in her voice. "You never intended to stay."

He had no more arguments. "I'll be leaving the day after tomorrow," he said.

"Silas, you still meaning to come along?"

"If Hat's sure she won't need me," the lad said. There was indecision in his voice. And longing.

"You're a free man, Silas Dewitt," Hattie said. "Your agreement was with Karl, not with me."

"But...."

"Go," she told him. "Go and be happy. You've been a good friend to me, but it's time for you to live your own life."

"Miz Hattie, I still think you oughta' tell Mist' Em the truth," William said to her that afternoon as the two of them piled the hay that had been drying in the big meadow. "He gonna think you've done chose me over him." From William's tone, that was a fearsome prospect indeed.

Hattie laughed, the first time she'd felt inclined to do so since last night.

"Yes, and that's what I want him to think. This way he doesn't feel responsible for me."

"But he ain't happy."

"William, Emmet would never leave me behind if he thought he had a hold on me--if I was truly his wife. As long as he thinks I've decided I want you instead of him, he feels free to go."

"It ain't right, Miz Hattie. It jest ain't right." But William argued no more.

Hattie forced herself to act as if there were nothing unusual about Emmet's departure. After all, hadn't he been leaving her behind regularly ever since the day they married?

He hunted the last day, almost as if he didn't believe William was capable. He checked every inch of the pasture fence, inspected William's carved hinges on the root cellar, and added more chinking to the back of the fireplace he'd built at her end of the cabin. Every so often, he came to Hattie and asked her about something.

"Are you sure you can find the fort?" He'd given her a map of the best route to Fort Boise, knowing she and William would have to go there for supplies at least once a year. She assured him that his map was a masterpiece of clarity.

"Remember, if anyone questions you about the gold, tell them it was mine.

Anybody who knows me knows I was a merchant sailor before I came to the mountains." She assured him she would be most convincing.

"Don't trust anyone, red or white. Goat Runner says he'll tell his people you have a right to be here, but don't count on anybody's listening to him. You may have to fight." And again she assured him she was ready and able to fight for her home.

Then it was morning and Silas was mounted. Emmet stood next to his horse, reins in his hands. Each carried a small fortune in gold wrapped in a bedroll, a pair of saddlebags stuffed with food. Neither carried a rifle, for they had insisted on leaving Emmet's Henry, Karl's shotgun, and the two rifles belonging to the renegades with Hattie and William.

Hattie stood next to William, watching as Emmet made one last check of his gear.

Only a few more minutes and she could relax this rigid guard on her emotions.

"Hattie girl, I'm sorry," Emmet said, reaching a hand to her. He didn't quite touch her.

"Don't be," she said, stepping closer. "You more than lived up to your part of the bargain." Rising to her toes, she kissed him, gently, softly, on the lips.

"You brought me home, Emmet, and that's nothing to be sorry for."

His arms went around her, pulling her against his body. Hattie told herself to savor this moment, for it must last her the rest of her life. When he bent his head to kiss her, she willingly gave him her mouth.

A long heart-stopping moment later, he released her and stepped back. Hattie swayed, then caught her balance. She forced herself to look into his eyes, to smile. "God go with you, Emmet Lachlan, wherever you wander."

He swung onto his horse. Looking down at her, he touched his forehead. "Take care of her, William."

"I'll do that, Mist' Em. "I'll do that for sure." William's arm went around her, catching her as she swayed.

Hattie watched until they were out of sight.

How strange it was, she thought, that a woman could go on living when her heart lay shattered within her breast.

Chapter Twenty.

Wasn't that just like a woman? Fickle as a summer breeze. He'd seen his shipmates thus betrayed again and again by the women who claimed to love them, only to toss them aside when someone better looking, richer, or more likely to stay ashore came along. Emmet himself had never taken a woman for more than a night. Not before Hattie. And now he was glad he had not.

Oh, she'd been eager enough to come to his bed when she figured it would get her what she wanted. Memories of the week in the gold basin flooded his mind and he forgot, for a while, his anger. Great God, but she was lovely. Passionate.

Generous with her kisses and with her slim, agile body. Emmet had never burned so hot for any other woman.

Would she have been so eager to please had he taken her on to Fort Vancouver as soon as the passes were open? He snorted. Not bloody likely. She'd played shy and modest until they were in the gold basin, until she saw that he was going to leave her rich.

"Wonder how they'll winter," Silas said, feeding fragments of sagebrush wood to the fire.

Emmet shrugged, not willing to admit he'd wondered the same thing, had fought his imaginings of what could go wrong, ever since they'd swum the river that morning.

"Sure surprised me, Hat turnin' to William like that. I though she was purely taken with you."

Emmet leapt to his feet. "Will you shut up!" He stalked off into the dusk, not caring where he went. He wouldn't sleep anyhow.

He still found her sudden change of fidelity incredible. By any other woman, such perfidy would not have surprised him.

But Hattie? Gentle, steadfast, passionate Hattie who'd been all he could have ever dreamed of and more. How could she?

He'd wanted to kill William for laying a hand on her, wanted to kill a man who'd been nothing but a loyal friend.

Hadn't he wished happiness for her, even though he could not provide it?Hadn't he?

So why did her defection to William seem such a betrayal?

The next day was easier, and the day after that easier still. He only thought of Hattie sometimes by the time they left the Burnt River behind. They passed wagon trains every day and each one reminded him of her, but he forced himself to set the memories aside, to dwell on the anger that still smoldered inside.

Silas turned and waved before they disappeared. Emmet did not.

"You sure you doin' the right thing, Miz Hattie?" William said. He had removed his supporting arm almost as soon as Emmet had turned away and now stood just behind her but not touching her.

She shook her head. "I don't think there is one right thing, William, but this is as right as it will ever be." She was as certain of that as she was of her own name.

Turning, she looked up the rise, seeing the cabin sitting foursquare on the bench. This was the home she needed. She would put down her roots as the starts she'd planted were doing, slowly, easing them into the new soil, gradually becoming used to the rhythm of days and nights, the progression of seasons, in this new land. And one day she would become part of this valley as surely as the tall firs and pines that had welcomed her.

"Yes," she said, more to herself than to William, "this is right--for me."

"For me too, Miz Hattie, but I 'spect we're gonna get mighty lonely sometimes."

Oh, yes!"Well, then," she told him briskly, "I guess we'll just have to keep too busy to notice, won't we?" If she worked hard enough, made herself tired enough each day, perhaps she would go to her bed at night and not dream of Emmet.

Someday.

"The first thing we're going to do," she decided, smiling up at the tall Negro on whom she depended entirely now, "is teach you that I'm just plain Hattie."

She had to smile at the stubborn expression that immediately crossed his face.

"We're partners, William, and friends. How can I feel like your friend if you insist on being formal?"

"It don't seem right."

She had to chuckle. "Well, it seems to me that what's right and what's wrong in Cherry Vale is going to be pretty much up to us from now on. Please," she said, touching his forearm, "no more 'Miz'?"

"If'n you say so Miz... Hattie." His doubt was evident, but she knew he would try.

The next weeks were busy ones. There were so many things they had to do before winter. But by the end of October, when they woke almost every day to sunlight on a silver-frosted meadow, they were ready.

Elk and venison swung above the fire between the cabin halves, curing in the smoke. Bundles of dried fish dangled from the rafters in William's cabin, along with flitches of bacon and more bundles of elk jerky. An empty flour barrel was filled with dried huckleberries and several of the crates that had once held Karl's tools contained dried elderberries, tiny seedy pellets too sour to eat alone but giving biscuits or cornbread flavor and texture. She'd tried drying the chokecherries, but their big seeds were about all that remained after a week in the sun. So she'd boiled them, day after day, with honey from the tree Silas had found, and now she had jelly in a dozen casings like those that held venison sausage.

And there were herbs. Hattie had picked and dried all the unnamed herbs Flower showed her, as well as some that she recognized as being similar to those back in New York and Pennsylvania--boneset, yarrow, several mint-like plants, the almost-chamomile and a tiny mustard-like thing that she hoped would serve as well as shepherd's-purse for poultices and the like. The ceiling of her cabin looked like an upside-down garden. Hattie often contemplated it, thinking what a sense of well-being it gave her to be so well-prepared for winter.