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“Sharon,” the woman said, sitting down on a rickety chair to feed her child.
“Are you originally from Gallup?” Stephanie said, bending down to pick up her camera. She heard the woman gasp. She looked over and saw her eyes widen.
“No,” Sharon said, her voice low and guarded. She placed the child’s lips to her breast. “I came with my brother. We had a fuss. He threw me out. I became a showgirl at the saloons. I found out I could make more money taking men home with me.”
“This home?” Stephanie said, gesturing with her free hand around her.
“No. When things were good I lived in the hotel,” Sharon said. “Then I met this man. I fell in love with him. I quit hustlin’. But suddenly he was gone. The very day I was going to tell him I was with child, I found out that he had left town. I . . . I . . . didn’t want to hurt my child so I didn’t go back to whorin’ around. I went to my brother and asked him to take me in. He refused. I didn’t beg him. I didn’t even tell him about the baby. I found this place. I made it my home. And to hell with Damon. I’d die before I’d ask for his help again.”
“Damon?” Stephanie and Runner spoke at once.
“Yes,” Sharon said in a low hiss. “Damon Stout.”
Stephanie and Runner were both rendered speechless by this newest discovery.
Hate for Damon, sour and pitiless, twisted in Runner’s gut.
Chapter 19
I love you for putting your hand
Into my heaped-up heart.
—ROY CROFF
Stephanie broke the awkward silence. “You are Damon Stout’s sister?” she said.
She looked slowly around her again, at the squalor. How could anyone send their sister away to live in such deplorable conditions? she thought incredulously. Even Damon!
“Damon is my blood kin,” Sharon said solemnly. “But I don’t like to admit that he is actually my brother.”
“I can see why,” Runner said, walking slowly around the room, studying the disarray. “Any man who allows his sister and her child to live like this is not a man at all. He is a coward of the worst kind.”
Stephanie shook herself out of her shock. She went and knelt down before Sharon. She gazed sadly at the baby who was struggling to get milk from the small, thin breast. Then she looked up at Sharon, saddened anew over her pallor. Her eyes were like two dark coals in her drawn flesh.
“We’re going to take you out of here,” Stephanie said, running her hand over the baby’s dirty, scab-infested scalp. “I will pay for your stay at the hotel. You will be given food, clean clothes, and water for a bath. Tonight you will be sleeping on a clean bed. Your son will be given clothes and warm, clean blankets.”
Sharon listened with parted lips and wide eyes. She slipped her breast back inside her dress. “Why would you do this for me and my son?” she asked, tears flooding her eyes. “I stole from you. I watched you leave the pack mule with the saddlebags on it. When you and this man went to the lunchroom, I took everything that I could carry. I was going to sell them tomorrow to whomever would pay me the highest price.”
Stephanie interrupted. “My name is Stephanie,” she murmured. She gestured with a hand toward Runner. “This is Runner.”
Sharon hung her head in shame. “I’m sorry for having stolen from you,” she said, “but I was going to buy some milk. I need milk to give my son the nourishment he needs. Or . . . or . . . he might die.”
Runner took the child into his arms. “Neither of you will die,” he said thickly. “Come with us. Tonight you will stay in the white man’s establishment. Tomorrow you will go with me to my village. My people will welcome you with open arms, as they did me, so many years ago.”
Stephanie marveled over what Runner was offering. She knew the depths of his hate for Damon Stout; it matched her own. Yet he was taking Damon’s blood kin into his heart and village.
Then she smiled slowly. She understood that he was not doing this only from kindness but also to irritate Damon when he discovered where his sister had been taken. No matter how much Damon had neglected his sister, there was no way on this earth that he would want her living with the Navaho. He hated the Navaho with a passion. When he did discover where she was and he went for her at the village, it would give the Navaho much pleasure to deny him his blood kin.
Sharon’s body was racked with heavy sobs. “I’ll never be able to repay you,” she cried, clutching Stephanie as she rose from her chair.
Stephanie winced at the feel of the fragile sharpness of Sharon’s bones.
“All of my family, but Damon, is dead,” Sharon moaned. “I never want Damon to know that I have a child. If he did, he’d take him away from me. Don’t let him. Please don’t let him.”
“How have you kept your brother from knowing about the child?” Runner asked. He held the baby in the circle of one arm and used his free hand to steady Sharon as Stephanie stepped away from her to get her camera equipment.
“No one knows about Jimmy,” Sharon said, sniffling. “I never take him from the house. When I leave to steal from people, I always hide him beneath blankets. I didn’t want Damon to know. If he took Jimmy to raise him, the child would turn out to be as mean, ugly, and cruel as my brother.”
