Rose (3 page)

Grabbing his black Stetson, he opened the door with one hand and anchored the hat on his head with the other before he closed the door behind him. With a practiced hand, he nestled the band of the hat more securely around his forehead to shade his eyes. They were far too blue, much too visible, on the sunny street. Although there was no need to expect trouble, he knew that pinning the star of a lawman on his chest and wearing a Colt strapped low on his hip and tied at the thigh, issued an open invitation to any drifter looking to stir up trouble.

The street was nearly empty. Down the way, a farmer and his family loaded a wagon pulled up before Al-Ray’s general store. Kase’s boots rang hollow on the sidewalk that fronted the buildings on his side of the street. The main and only street in town boasted two distinct personalities. The west side housed the jail, the bath and barber shop, the Yee family’s Chinese laundry, and Al-Ray’s mercantile. A man could spend a night in the poke, have a bath and shave while his clothes were washed and pressed, then treat himself to a tin of tobacco before he crossed to the less reputable side of town.

Kase glanced across at the east side of the street. Two large buildings there housed Paddie O’Hallohan’s Ruffled Garter Saloon and Flossie Gibbs’s Hospitality Parlor and Retreat, where Flossie and the girls entertained long after Paddie’s closed down for the night. The only other building on the east side was a tiny two-room store that had belonged to a wiry Italian immigrant until he was killed by a ricocheting bullet during a recent shoot-out between two drunken cowboys,

As Kase walked along, taking in the familiar sights and sound of Busted Heel, he thought about the circumstances that had led him to the remote Wyoming town. It seemed just yesterday that his stepfather had firmly taken him aside and asked him into the library for a serious discussion.

It had not taken long for word to reach Caleb Storm that his stepson, twenty-one and a junior lawyer with the prestigious firm of Rigby and Anderson, had attacked a client in the vestibule of the elegant offices overlooking the Charles River in Boston. That very afternoon, Caleb had ushered Kase into the library and impatiently motioned him toward one of the deep leather arm chairs near the fireplace.

Kase had stubbornly shaken his head and said, “I’d prefer to stand.”

Caleb’s tone had brooked no argument. “Sit! I’m not going to waste time beating around the bush, Kase. You have acted outrageously and I’d like to know why. This hasn’t happened since you went to law school. I thought these undisciplined outbursts had ended.”

Kase recalled brooding over an answer. No matter how hard he tried, he knew he could not emulate Caleb’s even-temperedresponse to blatant insults to their mixed blood. Nor could Kase easily dismiss the whispers and sly glances that he had endured his entire life. His stepfather, Caleb Storm, was of mixed lineage; he, too, was half Sioux. But Caleb had always had the ability to maintain control of his emotions when confronted with outright bigotry. He was able to adapt to his surroundings, to work within the confines of white society. Kase, on the other hand, had learned to let his fists speak for him.

As he thought back to their confrontation, Kase could still feel the hurt emanating from Caleb as he waited for an explanation. But Kase had refused to give any excuse for his latest outburst. He knew his actions were indefensible. Through his own hard work at law school and through Caleb’s influence in Washington, Kase had been granted a position with Rigby and Anderson, an old, well-established firm. Despite the stigma of his half-Sioux heritage, his reputation as an outstanding junior lawyer was growing. But in the library that day, Kase Storm had refused to defend himself. There was nothing he could say that might justify his physical attack on young Brandon Hamilton that morning. Nothing that Caleb would understand, for Caleb Storm would have handled the whole affair differently.

Kase thought he had put Brandon Hamilton and his other preparatory school classmates out of his mind until that morning when he stepped out of his office and overheard the young man speaking to Franklin Rigby, senior partner of the firm.

“I thought, Rigby, that a firm of your repute was beyond hiring anyone of mixed blood. I came seeking representation, not a sideshow medicine man. I won’t have Kase Storm defend this suit. What’s he prepared to do? A rain dance? Shake a few bones and feathers around the courtroom?”

Kase had watched Brandon straighten and look down his nose at Rigby. From the open doorway, he studied the aristocratic features that declared Brandon’s Puritan heritage— a sharply defined nose, clear blue eyes, carefully combed wavy blond hair. He was a sterling example of Boston society’s youth—wealthy, well educated, and able to trace his lineage back to the
Mayflower.
Brandon Hamilton had not changed all that much since their days together at the Bradford Preparatory Academy outside Boston. Hamilton embodied all that Kase had learned to hate with a fury unnurtured by anything his parents ever taught him. Hamilton and his classmates had personally instructed him with their own brand of education.

Kase had been eight when Caleb Storm moved his family back to the Dakotas after a year in Boston. The boy had loved the open land and life on the plains. Then, after seven years, they re-settled in Boston, where Caleb and Analisa sent Kase off to school. Analisa Van Meeteren Storm did so reluctantly, for she had always kept Kase close to her, but she agreed with Caleb that an education would one day offer Kase more protection than her constant nurturing. And so, as in all things, they had decided together to send Kase away to school. “Education,” Caleb had told him, “will make all the difference in your life. With it, doors will open that would otherwise remain closed. It will be your weapon and your strength.” So although Kase hated the new hard shoes and starched collars, the bleak brick buildings of the city, he gave up the freedom he had known out west, left behind his Indian pony and comfortable clothes, and went off to school to please his parents.

At first, his new classmates had merely taunted him. But the teasing soon became anonymous letters of hate. When Kase had tried to follow Caleb’s example and ignore them, his classmates changed their tactics. The taunts turned to jabs. He was tripped as he walked through the halls. A bucket of flour rigged above his door had doused him with its fine powdered whiteness when he entered the room. An accompanying note on his bed had assured him it was the whitest he would ever be. Finally, when some of the students surrounded him in the winter-barren woods that bordered the school and shaved his head in a symbolic scalping, Kase went to the headmaster.

When the culprits were let off with no more punishment than a verbal warning, the rage that had simmered inside him for so long reached the boiling point. From that very day, Kase Storm began to fight back, and did so thoroughly, employing all the fighting skills he had learned when he was just a youngster in the Dakotas.

At first he tried to keep the abuse he had suffered to himself, well aware that his mother was having a hard time of her own adjusting to city life. They had known the isolation of the prairie, the ceaseless wind and vast sea of open land, but it had not been as harsh as this human isolation. He thought it unjust that his mother had to suffer such a stigma. She was Dutch. She was white. Her husband was wealthy, and Caleb’s family name still carried its own prestige in Boston. But even with all his advantages, Caleb was still half Sioux. Many doors were closed to him and, because of him, to Analisa. She had done the unspeakable by bearing a half-breed son, as well as Caleb’s daughter, Annika. In the eyes of many, she was no longer fit to mingle in polite society.

Caleb has been careful to shield his Anja, as he called her, from insult. He surrounded her with his love and friends who stood beside him, friends he had made while serving the Bureau of Indian Affairs. But even as a child, Kase had been aware of the closed circle of friends they shared and the places they had never been because they were unwelcome.

He could still remember his life before Caleb Storm married his mother. They had lived in a one-room soddie outside Pella, Iowa, with his great-grandfather, the man he called Opa. As he grew older, the sly glances and whispers of the whites made him all too aware of the meaning of his mixed heritage. It became clear to him why his mother never went to town, why no children ever visited him when their own mothers placed sewing orders with Analisa. He came to realize that it was his mixed blood that set his mother apart from the Dutch community and forced her into the lonely existence she had known before Caleb came to them.

What he never fully understood, what his parents never completely explained, was what had become of the man, the Indian, who had fathered him and then left Analisa to face such isolation alone. How had Analisa met her Indian lover? Where had the man gone? What was his name?

Kase was certain he had inherited his fierce temper and intolerance from his true father. What else had he inherited from the mysterious man who had fathered him?

Caleb and Analisa had sent him to Bradford to make something of himself, and he wanted to please them above all else. He had tried to keep his problems at school from them. He fought with his growing rage, tried to become more like Caleb and to measure up to his stepfather’s standards, but his dark looks and exotic features went against him. So, too, did his temper. Once he had decided to stand up for himself with his fists, once he had felt the satisfaction of using his size and growing prowess to keep his tormentors at bay, there was no turning back. He became proficient at fighting his own fights.

Despite how much his parents suffered whenever the letters from the school arrived, he never told them what had initiated the fights. Whenever Caleb asked him if his classmates had taunted him, he remained silent. But Analisa, anxiety etched upon her serenely beautiful features, knew what had happened.

“Kase,” she often said,
“Laat het gaan.
Let it go. It is of no consequence. You must be bigger than they, more tolerant and forgiving.”

But to Kase it was of consequence in its very unfairness. Injustice was something that Kase Storm could not abide.

Between his outbursts, Kase became sullen and withdrawn. He attended to his studies and, with the help of one caring teacher who had seen the potential in him, was able to excel. He looked forward to holidays when Caleb would take him hunting. They would spend days in the woods where his stepfather taught him to live off the land. Hunting, riding, and target practice helped ease the burden of his days at school.

When he signed on at Rigby and Anderson, he hoped he had put the past behind him. It had been three years since he had used his fists on any man, but his fury overwhelmed him the morning he overheard Brandon Hamilton’s insults. He could not even recall moving across the room until he had held the man by the throat and pinned him against the wall. At six feet three, Kase towered over most men, and so Hamilton, a head shorter and pounds lighter had been easily grasped and thrust backward until he was pressed against the wall, fighting for breath.

Kase could still hear his own breath hissing between his teeth as he whispered close to the stunned face of the other man. “You want to see what an
Indian
can do, Hamilton? I’ll show you firsthand. I can slit your balls off before you have a chance to feel the knife. Then you’ll start choking on your own blood as I stuff them down your throat. But don’t worry, before you black out I’ll slit this reed-thin, lily-white throat of yours and put you out of your misery.”

Hamilton sputtered as his complexion purpled, yet Kase did not loosen his grip until he felt Rigby pulling at his shoulder, shouting at him to let go.

Kase shook Brandon Hamilton like a dog and then released him. Weak-kneed, the man slid down the wall as Kase, without a word to anyone, reentered his office, packed up his personal papers, and went home. The confrontation had been worth the cost. At least, he had thought so until his own belligerence had pushed Caleb Storm to reveal a secret to the past that had sent Kase running from all he held dear.

He reached the end of the boardwalk, and his thoughts returned to the present. Time passed slowly in Busted Heel. For a man with nowhere to go and little to do except brood over his past, Kase felt no need to hurry. He sauntered across the street toward Paddie’s Ruffled Garter Saloon.

He usually dropped in unannounced once every hour or so, just to be sure Paddie had everything under control. Pausing for a moment he rested against the door frame at the entrance to the saloon and gazed over the uneven swinging double doors into the darkened interior.

Slick Knox, owner of the bathhouse and barbershop, sat at a side table playing cards with a couple of drifters. Everything seemed quiet enough. Kase knew the man would leave the two drifters with enough money in their pockets to avoid trouble afterward. He was certain that Slick was a professional gambler turned businessman, but the man never admitted to as much. Since Knox seemed to be a fairly permanent fixture in town—one unwilling to cause trouble—Kase merely kept an eye on the games from time to time.

Paddie looked up and waved. Lamplight reflected off of his slick bald pate. His cheeks were red and his eyes twinkled as he stood behind the bar drying a beer glass. Black lace-edged garters of purple satin, the trademark of the Ruffled Garter Saloon, banded the man’s upper arms. Kase thought that with the addition of a beard and a red cap, Paddie would be the perfect Sinter Klaas, the Dutch version of Saint Nicholas he had believed in as a child.

Kase waved back and crossed the street. Having a marshal around sometimes cramped the customers’ style, so he rarely stayed in Paddie’s very long. But maybe, he thought with a wry twist of his lips, he was not welcomed by the men who did not know him because he was a half-breed.

“Damn,” he cursed under his breath. He’d never entertained such self-doubt before, so why start now?

A small body collided with his kneecaps, and Kase nearly toppled into the street. He reached out to grab the hitching post and straightened himself, but the hapless victim who’d careened into him was not so lucky. George Washington Davis sat sprawled in the dust beside Kase’s booted feet, his ebony skin covered with the dust of Main Street.