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Chapter One
The Montana Territory 1852
The bull train, consisting of four eight-yoke teams, drawing twelve covered wagons, moved slowly through the wind-blown tall buffalo grass, following the Yellowstone River that ran snake-like through the Montana Territory.
It was August, a perfect time of the year for traveling. To the west rose the dark Rockies, their sharp peaks standing out sharply against the pale blue sky. Northward were the three buttes of the Sweetgrass Hills. Eastward dimly loomed the Bear Paws; South, across the Yellowstone River, the pine-clad Highwood Mountains were in plain sight.
On all sides buffalo and antelope grazed quietly on the healthy, spring-fed grass. Sitting in the lead wagon, in the shade of the canvas that had been stretched over the seat to protect the new mother and child from the hot rays of the sun, were Bryce Edmonds and his wife Charlotte.
Charlotte gazed lovingly down at her two-week-old son, adoring him, yet regretting that he had not been born in more civilized surroundings, with a real doctor to look after her, a real bed on which to be comfortable, and with food readily available. As it was, the expedition's food supply had dwindled, and everything was now being rationed until they reached the Missouri River, where they could board a steamboat and return to the comforts of their palatial home in Saint Louis.
When Charlotte had offered to join these lepidopterists, led by her husband, s
he had not even thought of becoming pregnant on the long, tiring journey.
It had just happened.
"Are you too disappointed, dear?" Charlotte asked, gazing lovingly at Bryce, her husband of six years, whose blond hair had bleached almost white beneath the hot Montana sun.
But the sun had not changed his handsomeness. Even now, sitting so close to him on the rugged seat of the wagon, she wanted to reach out and touch his face or run her fingers through his thick hair. She loved him more each day, as though each was their first kiss, their first caress.
When a fly started buzzing around the face of her son, her thoughts were averted to things other than romancing her beloved husband. She shooed the fly away from her child, whose tiny lips were contentedly suckling at her breast.
Her Kirk.
Her adorable Kirk.
She had fought off mosquitoes, ticks, and flies until she was weary from it all.
Bryce cast Charlotte an easy smile.
''Am I disappointed over having not found the euphaedra?" he said, referring to the rare Venezuelan butterfly they had been hunting. "Naw, can't say that I am."
His gaze shifted, enjoying the sight of his son nursing from his mother's milk-filled breast. It was a sight that would linger in his memory until the day he died. It was so wonderful to finally have a child.
After five years of trying, he and his wife had almost given up on ever having children. Then, suddenly, as though someone had touched Charlotte's womb with a magic wand, she was pregnant. That the child had been born in the midst of such hardship seemed almost a miracle. Indeed, it was a miracle that any of them were alive.
There were Indians everywhere: the Cree, the Crow, the Blackfoot. For some reason, this wagon train had been spared any raids, as though God were there with them every inch of the journey, watching over them.
"I would have been terribly disappointed over not finding the rare butterfly," he continued, nodding. "But that little surprise package you're holding in your arms makes all the difference in the world in my attitude. I couldn't be happier, darling. First the prettiest woman in Saint Louis accepts my proposal of marriage, then I am appointed curator at the science museum, and then, by God, to top it off, I now have a son. Who could complain, darling? Who?"
"But you so looked forward to finding the euphaedra," Charlotte said, easing Kirk's lips from her breast as his eyes closed in a contented sleep. She wrapped him in a lightweight blanket and cradled him in her left arm as she began rebuttoning her dress. "If you had caught it, you could have completed your collection. Then you could settle down and write that book that you have spoken of so often to mea book explaining your ventures and all the butterflies that you have captured in detail, as well as the life history of each. How nice it would have been, darling, if…"
Bryce returned his eyes to the trail, so that Charlotte would not see the disappointment that lay shadowed in their depths. He had sworn that the expedition's failure was not troubling him, yet in truth, it was eating away at his gut.
"There'll be another time, another place," he said. "Right now all I'm concentrating on is getting you and Kirk out of Indian territory and to the safety of a steamboat. It shouldn't be much longer now, darling. We may even reach the Missouri by sundown tonight."
The thought that this dreadful journey was soon to be behind her excited Charlotte.
Something up ahead, lying on the ground just beyond the shade of some tall bushes, drew Charlotte's attention. She leaned her head forward, then gasped when she saw that it was not an animal, but a lifeless hand.
Charlotte paled at the thought of coming across someone that had been murdered, even perhaps scalped by the Indians. It would be their luck, she thought to herself, to just barely get within sight of the steamboat and the Indians come down upon them with a vengeance.
"Bryceup ahead, do you see?" Charlotte said, pointing. They were close enough now for her to see that this was not the hand of a white person.
It was copper in color!
It was an Indian's!
A panic seized Charlotte's insides, fearing this might be a trap.
"By God, it's a hand," Bryce said, drawing rein and stopping the slow-traveling bulls.
Charlotte grabbed for Bryce's arm. "Be careful," she whispered, her eyes wild. "It could be a trap. We could be attacked by Indians any minute now."
Bryce reached a gentle hand to her flushed cheek. "Now, now," he said, as though he were soothing a child. "Let's not let our imagination run away with us."
He drew his hand away from her and leaned out so that he could see the other wagons that had come to a dead halt behind his, his traveling companions already off their wagons and heading hurriedly toward him.
