Rain Shadow (Dutch Country Brides) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Rain Shadow (Dutch Country Brides, #2)

  Rain Shadow | Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Epilogue

  Heaven Can Wait

  Land of Dreams

  Saint or Sinner

  Meet the Author

  From Writers Digest Books

  Copyright© 1994, 2013 by Cheryl Ludwigs.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover by Carey Abbott at ebookcoverdesignsbycarey.com

  Rain Shadow

  Cheryl St.John

  Raised by the Lakota Sioux and having traveled with the Wild West Show for many years, Rain Shadow is unprepared for a forced stay at the home of Anton Neubauer while her son recuperates. He is a rock, a man who has lived on and farmed the same several hundred acres since he was young.

  Anton needs a mother for his son, but he needs someone domestic and ladylike, not the Smith & Wesson toting female who sets up her teepee in his front yard and whose target practice wakes him at the crack of dawn. But fate, two little boys and two old men conspire to keep them together, and it’s too late to deny their passion once love is part of the equation.

  This special book is lovingly dedicated to

  Mom, who taught me I could be anything I wanted

  and accomplish anything I set my mind to.

  Jay, who helped make my dream come true.

  Jennifer, who prayed.

  LeighAnn who cooked and cleaned for holidays.

  Jared and Kristin who grew up thinking pizza was a nutritious meal.

  and to

  Romance Authors of the Heartland.

  Over the years members who are also dear friends have critiqued my pages,

  encouraged and supported me, proofread in a pinch,

  shared many ups and downs

  and shared even more laughs.

  Thank you.

  Rain Shadow

  Prologue

  Nebraska, 1875

  An unfriendly wind carried the pervading stench of scorched wood and canvas. Two Feathers, crouched in an outcropping of boulders, ignored the odor as well as the rocks biting through his moccasins, his attention focused on the ruinous scene below him.

  The charred skeletons of two dozen covered wagons lay on their sides like so many smoldering carcasses on the Nebraska prairie. Thin gray trails of acrid smoke curled into the darkening sky. Growing bolder as night drew near, black scavengers circled overhead, occasionally swooping toward the scattered bodies of the slain whites.

  He examined a few overturned rocks. A small war party had lain in wait earlier. The arrows in the bodies were Crow. Two Feathers wasn’t worried that the band would return. They had scalped and looted and were long gone.

  Ominous thunderclouds had obliterated the setting sun the better part of an hour ago, and the purple sky boasted the unmistakable aura of rain.

  Through the stillness a pitiful wail carried, wafting with the dry, acrid stench of gunpowder. The sound had grown weak—at times almost a mewling—but its effect was no less profound than the first time Two Feathers had heard it.

  Several yards from the violent scene, Two Feathers saw a small figure take a few reeling steps and crumple on the short-cropped buffalo grass. It was a girl child, tiny and dark-haired. The sun, her foremost enemy earlier, had disappeared, and now her true peril began.

  The Indian gestured to the spotted pony behind him, covered the velvet nose and whispered a command. The animal stood unmoving, its eyes watchful. Two Feathers crept stealthily from his hiding place, silently closing the distance between his horse and the child.

  Catching sight of the lithely muscled Indian dressed only in deerskin leggings, a knife at his hip, her dark eyes registered surprise. Her head rolled tiredly, but the soft keening lessened.

  She was no more than three or four summers, dressed in the muslin and aproned fashion of the whites. Her exquisite hair, near black and flowing, held bits of dry grass and twigs. A heart-shaped gold locket with a stone Two Feathers didn’t recognize dangled from a chain around her neck. Was the ornament a bauble to pacify her during the day’s journey, or perhaps a mother’s last frantic attempt to leave the child a shred of her identity?

  Two Feathers crouched over her.

  She stared back fearlessly, her stormy violet eyes taking in his angular features, his beaded headband and the two red feathers dangling over his left ear.

  What had she seen here this day? How much had she been spared? Her lack of fear showed a brave and strong spirit. Wandering away from the others as she was, he imagined a parent thrusting her from the wagon when the attack came. He would have done the same. He would have taken any measure to save his own child—had she lived.

  “Mama,” the girl child managed in a raw-throated voice, and touched the feathers. Was she asking for a parent or was his long, black hair familiar? She placed a dirty palm on his mahogany cheek, and his warrior’s stoic heart admitted her.

  To the west, an enormous dark cloud covered what little remained of the sun, and rumbling thunder shook the ground. He couldn’t leave her to die. Not this child with a strong spirit and will to live. Wakon Tanka had spared her for a reason.

  Lightning forked from the dark sky, punctuating Two Feathers’ decision.

  There’d been no movement near the scattered wagons since he’d come upon them. If anyone lived through the massacre, he would soon be dead. Once darkness settled on the plain, the night predators would close in. The child would be prey to scavengers and the ominous storm.

  He didn’t know which wagon the child belonged to, and if he ventured any nearer, a dying white man might mistake him for one of the Crow attackers and shoot. With deft movements, he plucked her from the ground and ran silently to his waiting pony. She didn’t weigh as much as most game he brought down and gave less resistance.

  Astride, the girl in one arm, he kicked the pony with a moccasined heel and skirted the carnage of the wagon train. A jagged streak of lightning pierced the sky, momentarily illuminating his granite-cut features. Before the rain fell, Two Feat
hers pulled a deerskin from his bundle and covered the sleeping child. His child now.

  His Rain Shadow.

  Chapter One

  October 1894

  Smoke, like an eddying black caterpillar, spiraled endlessly past the excursion car window. This train was one of the three needed to transport performers, orchestra, cowboy band, staff, tents, props, wardrobe and livestock. Rain Shadow grew tired of watching the variegated red and gold trees of western Pennsylvania reel past and closed her eyes. The steady lurch of the locomotive chugging along the iron rails wore on her nerves. She pulled a gold locket from beneath the neck of her deerskin tunic and thoughtfully fingered her only piece of jewelry.

  It was time.

  Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show had finished a five-month season in Brooklyn and was on its way south to winter quarters, a trek they made each fall. If she were going to prove herself, it was time. She had the entire winter ahead to prepare. When the show opened again in Philadelphia next April, she would shoot the pants off Annie Moses Butler—the famed Annie Oakley.

  “Are you hungry, daughter?”

  Rain Shadow opened her eyes and accepted an apple from Two Feathers.

  He studied her face a long minute. “You are planning your contest?”

  “Yes.”

  “What if you lose?”

  She took a bite of the crisp, sweet apple. Losing was something she’d never let herself think about. Covertly studying Annie Oakley, Johnnie Baker and the other sharpshooters, Rain Shadow had developed her skill over the years. Under Two Feathers’ tutelage, she was confident her precision and timing had surpassed the others’. “I won’t.”

  His coal black eyes, unclouded by criticism, bespoke indulgence.

  How could she make him understand? How could she tell the father who had nurtured and provided for her since childhood that she wanted to give her son a real family? That she wanted Slade to have a home and go to the white man’s school the way she never had? If she proved herself a better shot than Annie Oakley, she was certain her remaining relatives would be proud to claim her.

  Instead, she touched his arm. “You know I’m not ungrateful. You’ve filled every corner of my heart with your kindness and taught me everything you know. Both of us are caught between two worlds. You remember the way it used to be, but I plan for the way it can be.

  “When I claim my position as champion sharpshooter, I won’t leave you. Together we’ll learn how to live a new life. Aren’t you tired of living one grand performance after another?”

  He grunted and pulled a knife and a whetstone from the satchel at his feet.

  Rain Shadow watched his dark, scarred warrior’s hands sharpen the blade in deft strokes. Of course he was. She knew the alternative would be unbearable for Two Feathers, a Sioux who lived by the direction of his guardian spirit—a spotted eagle. Reservation life was like imprisoning the proud, freedom-loving Indian in a cage.

  The Lakota loved the earth, and all things born of it, the soil itself, and their attachment to it grew with age. Old people sat on the ground to experience being close to a mothering power, many even removed their moccasins to feel the sacred dirt on their feet.

  The ancient way of life was rapidly becoming a thing of the past. Towns and farms and railroads had presumptuously erased the hunting grounds. The sounds of birds, gourd rattles and ceremonial chants were usurped by tinhorn saloons, clanging steel and the rumble of wagon wheels. The white man’s song of progress was louder than the red man’s Sun Dance. Rain Shadow had often wondered if it was her white-eyes heart that lent her foresight.

  More than grateful to Two Feathers, she loved him as the only parent she’d ever known. He was a man trapped between two cultures. The entire purpose of the Wild West Show was to recreate a piece of the Old West as it had been, and Two Feathers was as happy with the show as he could be anywhere. He no longer had a home and a people. For now the show was the only place she belonged, as well.

  Rain Shadow’s thoughts shifted to her seven-year-old son on the train ahead of this one. She wanted a full life for Slade. She wanted him to feel the acceptance she had never known. If he were to succeed, he must be given every opportunity to learn and grow and prosper in the white man’s world.

  He needed a family. She would find him one. Somewhere she had grandparents, aunts or uncles, maybe cousins. She loved Two Feathers and appreciated all he’d done for her. Desiring to meet her flesh and blood family was no reflection on him. Something was missing, though, and if she could find it, she would feel whole. Using the locket as her only source of identity, she’d asked in every city and town the show had toured. Having been unsuccessful at locating relatives on her own thus far, she would let them find her. As soon as her story made the newspapers and dime novels, whatever family she had would seek her out.

  It was only a matter of time.

  * * *

  The bell over the shop door tinkled. Anton Neubauer glanced up to discover Estelle Parkhurst storming into his store.

  “Mr. Neubauer.” Ruddy-faced and out of breath, she marched to the counter behind which he sat on a stool.

  On the glass work surface in front of him, a myriad of tiny gears and springs lay—pieces of the clock he’d been working on for the past hour. “Mornin’, Mrs. Parkhurst. What can I do for you?”

  “You can teach that son of yours some manners for one thing,” she huffed. “And for another you can replace the window on the alley side of my office.”

  “Again?” Anton slid his new spectacles from his face and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’m sorry about the window. I’ll talk to Nikolaus about it.”

  “Talking seems to have little effect on the boy. He’s only six years old, yet he’s allowed to run wild in the streets. What he needs is a firm hand and strict guidance! ”

  “Playing in the alley is hardly what I’d call running wild, Mrs. Parkhurst. I can’t expect him to stay cooped up in here with me when I have work to do on Saturday.”

  “Well, then you should leave him with one of his aunts. The child needs supervision.”

  Anger rising, Anton stood. “Look. My sisters-in-law both have children of their own to look after, and they take care of Nikolaus plenty as it is.” He checked an exasperated sigh. “I said I’d replace the window. Nikolaus is just a boy. It’s only natural for him to throw things when he’s playin’.”

  The woman puffed out her ample bosom like a banty rooster. “If he throws one more thing through my window, I’ll report you and your boy to the authorities! Do yourself a favor, Mr. Neubauer. Find that child a mother.”

  Slack-jawed, Anton watched the door close behind her. The bell tinkled musically. He dropped to the edge of the stool. “Tell me something I don’t know, ya old pickle puss.” Intuitively, he turned in the direction of the back room. His towheaded son kicked the doorjamb with the tip of his scuffed shoe.

  “Hi, Papa.” Nikolaus thrust his lower lip forward, and his shoulders sagged. A streak of dirt across one cheek completed the irresistible look of little-boy innocence.

  “Nikky.”

  “You gonna whup me?”

  “C’mere.” Anton knelt on the wooden floor.

  Mutely, hands stuffed in the pockets of his faded denim overalls, Nikolaus trudged to his waiting father. His round blue eyes filled with tears. “Sorry.”

  Anton’s chest tightened with tenderness and guilt. Hanging around the confining shop was difficult for a child with all the energy of a lightning bolt. For weeks he’d been promising to take Nikolaus hunting for a wild turkey. He pulled the child against his wide chest and hugged him hard, struck as always by the changeless and unbounded love his son inspired. “I know, son.”

  “It was just an ol’ hunk of cinder I found in the alley. I didn’t think I threw it hard enough to bust the glass.”

  “You’ve got quite an arm there. You’ll be a good mosche balle player when you’re a little bigger.” The boisterous game was a favorite activity among the male population of
the Pennsylvania Dutch community. A good mosche balle player was revered by all.

  “Really, Pa? Ya think I will?” Nikolaus drew back excitedly.

  “Really. I’d better tell Uncle Franz and Uncle Jakob to watch out.”

  The bell over the door tinkled, and father and son exchanged resigned glances. Pickle Puss Parkhurst again? Anton stood. One of his brothers closed the door behind him.

  “Didn’t expect to see you, Jakob.”

  “I brought Lydia’s eggs into town.”

  “Uncle Jake!” Nikolaus ran and flung his arms around the legs of the man who looked much like his father.

  Jakob ruffled the boy’s pale blond hair with a huge hand. “Look what Aunt Lydia sent for you.”

  The child accepted the small bag and drew out a sugar cookie.

  “Why don’t you take your cookies in back and play with your horse collection for a while?” Anton suggested.

  “Okay, Papa.” He headed for the back room.

  Anton sat and gestured to the other stool.

  Jakob straddled it and splayed a large hand on the glass counter. His eyes, less intense, a frostier blue than his brother’s, sparked with humor. “Who’s the lucky girl tonight?”

  “Hmm.” Anton put on his spectacles and poked at the clock parts with a long finger.

  “C’mon. Your bride shopping isn’t exactly a secret. Seems you’d be quite a catch for these local gals. Last week Helena McLaury, the week before that Sissy Clanton... I hear the widow Schofield even had a few spins around the dance floor with you last month. Whatsa’ matter, did she step on your toes?”

  “This isn’t funny, Jakob. I need to find a wife, and none of the women around here are passable.”

  “Sissy is under thirty and has all her teeth. What’s wrong with her? And next to my wife, the widow Schofield makes the best apple dumplin’s in all of Pennsylvania.”

  “I didn’t see you marrying either of them.” Jakob had met his wife on a trip through Accord. She had been a member of the Harmony Society.

  “She has a sister.” Jakob’s bright blue eyes sparkled with mischief. “Right pretty, too.”