Dorothy Garlock Read Online Free PDF Page B

Brutus lived and Caesar didn’t. My Brutus is a survivor. I got him from a trapper who mated a timber wolf and a mastiff bitch. His wolf blood is predominant. He can almost follow the scent of a bird in flight. He’s loyal and smart and doesn’t seem to require the friendship of any living creature except me and the horses. What more can I ask?”
    Rosalee’s thoughts were in total confusion. Logan Horn was an educated man. There was more to him, much more, than any man she had ever met. For the space of a dozen heartbeats she sat there regarding him in thoughtful silence.
    “You’re a very strange man, Mr. Horn,” she whispered wonderingly. The pulse at the base of her throat beat frantically. She had the feeling that this was a very important moment in her life.
    “You wouldn’t think so if I was all white,” he said quietly. “I think of myself as a man, with needs just like any other man.”
    “I would still think you’re different,” she insisted.
    “I could say the same for you. I’ve not met many women in the West that knew Brutus killed Caesar. And none in an isolated place such as this.”
    “My mother was a schoolteacher before she married my papa. How long have you been away from your mother’s people, Mr. Horn?” She held her breath during the silence that followed. Had she been too bold? Would he tell her to mind her own business?
    “A long time. I was six years old when my uncle came back to the village to get his Indian wife and daughter. He persuaded my mother and my grandfather to let me go with them. I would be educated and sent back to help my people.”
    “And were you?”
    “I was educated to the point that I almost forgot who I was. Then the war came along. I served for four years. During that time, facing death everyday, I found myself.”
    She caught the faint sound of an indrawn breath. “You haven’t talked about yourself for a long time, have you?” she asked in a thoughtful murmur. “Did you miss your mother?”
    “At first I had Dancing Flower, my uncle’s wife. He named her Louise and insisted that I call her that, but I thought of her as Dancing Flower. She died, then her daughter died, and there was only me and my uncle.”
    “How old were you then?”
    “I was eight.”
    “Poor little boy. Did you cry?”
    “The white part of me cried, the Indian part didn’t.”
    In spite of knowing the danger of probing farther, Rosalee was compelled to say: “Your uncle must have loved you.”
    “I guess he did in his own way. I went to good schools . . . for a while. Then I was taken out and tutored privately. You see, the people who send their children to exclusive academies don’t want them sitting in the classroom with an Indian. At first I thought there was something wrong with
me.
Later I asked my uncle about it.”
    “Did he tell you?”
    “No. It was then I realized that he never really looked at me.” A deep undertone in his voice revealed the pain from long ago. “My uncle had a deep sense of responsibility for me, but that was all. He and my father came West with John Fremont in ’42 and were made welcome in my mother’s village. They spent the winter and each took an Indian wife. When it was time to move on my father divorced my mother, but my uncle promised to return and he did. He tried to make up for my father’s callous attitude toward my mother and me by seeing to my education and making me his heir when he died.”
    “Did you ever see your father again?”
    “No. He and my uncle had a falling out. Both were wealthy Englishmen. My father stayed in the West. My uncle lived out his life in Saint Louis.”
    “Is Horn your father’s name?”
    “It’s my name. I was born in a Cheyenne village and named Deer Horn by my grandfather. My uncle named me Logan after we went to Saint Louis. He didn’t want to enroll me in school with a name like Deer Horn.”
    Rosalee became self-conscious about the questions she was asking. Looking into his eyes, she