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  Frontier Fires

  Book Two of the Blue Hawk Saga by the Award-winning Author of Savage Horizons

  Rosanne Bittner

  Copyright © 1987 by Rosanne Bittner. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from Don Congdon Associates, Inc; the agency can be reached at [email protected].

  Cover design by Kimberly Killion of The Killion Group.

  Hold not thy peace, oh God of my praise; for the mouth of the wicked and the mouth of the deceitful are opened against me; they have spoken against me with a lying tongue. They compassed me about also with words of hatred; and fought against me without a cause. For my love they are my adversaries; but I give myself unto prayer. And they have rewarded me evil for good, and hatred for my love.

  Psalm 109: 1-5

  This novel contains several references to historical characters, locations or events that actually existed or occurred during the time period of this story. All such reference is based on factual, printed material available to the public and has been researched to the best of the author’s ability. Most dialogue attributed to actual historical characters is not taken from direct quotations but is the author’s interpretation of what each character might have said, based on historical record regarding the nature and personality of those characters.

  Primary characters in this novel, as well as the events in the lives of those characters, are fictitious and a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance of the author’s fictitious characters to actual persons, living or dead, or of the author’s fictitious events to any occurrences of that time is purely coincidental.

  This novel is based on major historical events in what is now the state of Texas during the years 1833 through 1842.

  He was the hawk . . . all power and strength, sharp of eye and full of courage and daring, rising high and visiting far places. But she was the wind that carried him . . .

  Contents

  Introduction

  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

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Introduction

  * * *

  Their name was Sax, and the land was called Texas. They fit each other, the Saxes and Texas, big men and strong women in a big and strong land. The year was 1833, a time of increasing turmoil in the Province of Texas, which still belonged to Mexico. Caleb Sax and his family were the owners of 49,000 acres of land northwest of San Felipe de Austin, the American settlement founded by Stephen Austin. It was an area of Texas growing rapidly with a heavy influx of new settlers, most of whom were from Southern states like Tennessee and Kentucky. The newcomers were seeking free land, offered by the Mexicans in return for a promise to settle and civilize Mexico’s northernmost territories. But to do that they had to face the Comanches and Apaches, who considered the land their own and used any ruthless means necessary to prove it. The American settlers had only to promise to abide by Mexican laws, accept the Catholic faith and give up voting rights. It all seemed a small price to pay for vast amounts of free land, and so they came.

  Mexico welcomed them—at first. Its own government was new, and the country hoped that the industrious Americans would help their land prosper. But they underestimated the American thirst for expansion; the American determination to live and do as they damn well pleased; and to worship as they wished.

  By 1833, Texas was a land made up of many different types of people, perhaps too many, with more arriving every day and many of them straining against ever-tightening Mexican rule. All-out war was not immediately considered, but the word was whispered. It was a worry to the common settler, already plagued by Indian raids, spring flooding, summer drought, grass fires, violent storms and marauding outlaws.

  But the Saxes were accustomed to struggles and deprivation. And, for now, Caleb and Sarah Sax cared little for the outside world. They had found each other, after years of separation, and their love had not changed. Theirs was a passion as big and magnificent as the land in which they had chosen to settle.

  Caleb had come to Texas first. He was the half-breed son of a Cheyenne woman who had been raped by a French trapper. His looks were all Indian but his eyes were a stunning blue, and his mixed blood left him a man torn between the white and Indian worlds. The first nine years of his life had been spent with the Cheyenne and Sioux, who called him Blue Hawk. But war among the Indians had left young Blue Hawk wounded and orphaned, and he had been adopted by a white man.

  Ever since, he had lived in both worlds, once marrying a Cheyenne woman who was killed, then falling in love with his beautiful Sarah. That love had been violently stolen from him, and years later he had found solace in the arms of a gentle Cherokee woman, Marie, with whom he had settled in Texas. Marie died, but Caleb had lived to continue building his vast ranch, raising some of the finest horses in all of Texas and beyond, selling them at the Gulf to buyers from the States.

  And then he found his Sarah again. He was united with his one great love, and finally had the home and family he had always wanted. More than that, he felt he had found a solid compromise for his two bloods—the wild land called Texas, which offered enough freedom to satisfy his Indian blood; yet was civilized enough to settle and build a future for the white woman who was his wife, and for whom he had chosen the white man’s way of living.

  Texas was home, where he and Sarah could forget their tormented past and start over, in spite of the hardships of the land. Nothing and no one would ever again separate them. Even in death, they would be together, for such great love does not die with the human body. It goes on and on, living in the sons and daughters and grandchildren …

  Chapter

  One

  * * *

  In June 1833, after a smothering heat wave; eastern Texas had been drowned by a violent storm that had brought a sudden and unusual chill to the air. Dawn broke through deep pink, wispy clouds that soon gave way to a brilliant blue sky that looked down on the vast acreage and beautiful horses that belonged to Caleb Sax. Low mountains sprawled around the borders of the Sax land, sheltering a broad, green valley broken occasionally by sloping hills and odd rock formations.

  Normally all the Saxes would be busy doing the endless morning chores that came with caring for several hundred horses and more land than a man could ride in a day. But today only the hired help worked. The Saxes themselves were all gathered together in the modest adobe house belonging to Caleb and Sarah, where they anxiously awaited the birth of a new Sax child.

  Sarah was thirty-five years old, and this was only her second child. Her first child, Lynda, was eighteen years old. Sarah was approaching the end of her childbearing years, and her health was not good. But this baby was her gift to Caleb, their celebration of being reunited, and their love gave her the strength to bear it with joy. She had left the civilization of St. Louis and made a home in the wilds of Texas to be with her Caleb. And to her new home she had brought the mixture of refinement and resilience that m
ade up her own spirit.

  Their “house of clay,” as Sarah called the adobe house they lived in, was airy and bright, with high ceilings and ruffled curtains over the windows. The large main room had polished wood floors and was dominated by a fireplace built along one wall, which served for both heating and cooking. An oven was built into one side, and the smell of baking bread or pie often filled the Sax home.

  Off the main room was Sarah and Caleb’s bedroom, a spacious area closed off by a curtained doorway. Clothes were stored neatly in the closet, or in the drawers of two homemade pine dressers; the polished wood floors were decorated with cheerful hand-braided rugs. On a second floor reached by ladder from the main living area was a loft for sleeping. This Sarah kept as clean as the downstairs, its feather bed plumped up and covered with a hand-made quilt. Most every piece of bedding or clothing in the Sax household was made by Sarah, who once earned her living as a seamstress.

  By the standard of their neighbors, the Sax house was very large but it had to be roomy, for Caleb Sax was a big, broad-shouldered man, standing six feet three inches tall. Tom Sax, Caleb’s son by a Cheyenne woman, was just as big; his daughter Lynda’s husband Lee was, like his Cherokee ancestors, not tall but a broad, burly young man who the family teasingly labeled a bull.

  Normally, the Sax home was filled with laughter and warm conversation. But today groans from the pain of Sarah’s labor filled the rooms. Caleb stoked up the fire in a small fireplace in their bedroom, where Sarah lay pale and exhausted in the big, four-poster bed she and Caleb shared. Both had known moments of ecstasy in that bed, for after finding one another again after years of separation, their passion had been fiery, their needs consuming, their love stronger and sweeter than it had ever been.

  Caleb hoped keeping the room warm would somehow help ease Sarah’s labor pains, but he knew deep inside that the only thing that would help was for the child to get born. He could do nothing but wait and pray. He didn’t like this helpless feeling.

  Their daughter Lynda stood near her mother, holding her hand while a Cherokee woman named Ada Highwater acted as midwife. Sarah’s red-gold hair was damp with perspiration, and she mumbled something about looking terrible. Caleb smiled sadly at the remark, for to him she was more beautiful at this moment than ever. She was his Sarah, still young to him, her green eyes and milky skin and lovely shape all as enticing as when he had fallen deeply in love with her so many years ago.

  Their daughter was equally beautiful, but she had none of her mother’s fair-skinned features. Lynda was dark like her father, and looked more like a full-blooded Indian than the mixed breed she was. Her form was exquisite, tall and slender and round in just the right places; and although her skin was dark, her eyes were as blue as her father’s—and sometimes they showed the same fire and wildness for which her father was notorious.

  “She’ll be all right, Father,” Lynda said, trying to reassure Caleb.

  “Of course she will,” Ada Highwater added, bustling around the room trying to gather her things. “I have to leave, just for a few minutes. My Jake, he goes far today for a roundup. I wish to pack his food and make sure he has what he needs.” She glanced at Caleb. “Is it all right? I will not be long, Mister Sax. And I will be close by.”

  Caleb nodded. “This could go on for a while yet, and I don’t want Jake riding off without the proper supplies. We know where to get you. Besides, you need a break, Ada.”

  The woman nodded, stroking Sarah’s hair gently. “I will not be long.”

  She hurried out, and Sarah moaned just as the woman left. She arched with the pain, and her breath came in groaning gasps. She called Caleb’s name and he strode to her bedside, clasping her hand in his own. He leaned over her lovingly, his eyes blazing as if he hoped to infuse her with his own strength. Those eyes were what made most people take a second look at Caleb Sax. Their startling blueness put the finishing touch to his stirring handsomeness. His thirty-eight years of hard living had made him a strong man, as if age only enhanced his rugged good looks. The sun caught his face as he bent over his wife, accenting the thin white scar that ran down his left cheek. Caleb had gotten the scar when he was only a teenager, and had killed the man who had given it to him.

  “Don’t let them … take this baby,” Sarah muttered in her pain.

  Caleb gently stroked the red-gold hair back from her beautiful face, realizing his wife, delirious in her pain, was lost in bitter memories.

  “Nobody will take this one,” he told her softly. “I’m right here, Sarah. I won’t let anybody take this one.”

  Caleb looked away then, needing a moment to control the violent rage and pain he felt when he thought of the horror this woman he loved had suffered at the hands of a man named Byron Clawson. He would kill Clawson some day. Of that he had no doubt. The man had often beat and humiliated Sarah, then kept her so severely sedated that her health had been damaged. Clawson still lived in St. Louis, a wealthy banker, and it was only the daily demands of running a vast ranch in Texas, as well as Sarah’s urgings, that kept Caleb from going to Missouri to murder the man. Sarah feared Caleb would get caught, and pleaded with him, knowing that to go to a civilized place like St. Louis would only bring Caleb a hanging.

  Byron Clawson was a powerful man in St. Louis, but that mattered little to Caleb Sax. He knew that one day he would feel Clawson’s soft flesh give way under his hunting knife, for besides his cruelty to Sarah, Clawson had once tried to kill Caleb. He was the worst kind of enemy—a back-shooter and a coward. Clawson had left Caleb for dead, but Caleb had managed to survive, although he had lain paralyzed for months. He still suffered pain and occasional numbness from the incident. Sarah, who had been told Caleb was killed, had been forced to marry Clawson, for she was pregnant with Caleb’s child. Clawson had been brutally cruel to her, and had taken her baby daughter away from her at birth, put her in an orphanage, and told Sarah the baby had died. Clawson hated the child because she was Caleb’s. For years Sarah, Caleb and their daughter had lived separate lives.

  Although the horror of those years was behind them now, Caleb knew that in the pain of labor Sarah was reliving the nightmare of not being allowed to keep Lynda and raise her baby. That made this new baby so important. She would hold and love this one. She would put this one to her breast and feel it suckle its nourishment. She would love it, be the mother Byron Clawson had never allowed her to be. This baby had to be born healthy. Nothing must go wrong.

  Sarah opened soft green eyes to meet Caleb’s blue ones. Caleb stroked her hair as she rested from the pain of the last contraction. The love in their gaze was not just the emotion of husband and wife, or just lovers, but of friends in the deepest sense. Caleb and Sarah had known each other since childhood at Fort Dearborn, now a growing city called Chicago. Caleb had been just a small orphaned Indian boy called Blue Hawk. A trapper named Tom Sax had found and adopted the boy, giving him the Christian name Caleb and the last name Sax, and they became as much father and son as if they were blood related.

  That was when Caleb had first met the little girl named Sarah, Tom’s niece. They had become great friends, developing a brother/sister relationship. Sarah had taught Caleb most of what he learned about the English language and white man’s customs. But the two of them had lost contact when Sarah was returned to St. Louis, to be raised in wealth and comfort.

  After that Caleb left Fort Dearborn and returned to the Cheyenne. Only years later did he see Sarah again, and by then she was a young woman. The childhood friendship they had once known soon turned to deep love and unbridled passion, a love affair thwarted by the young man who was determined to have her—Byron Clawson.

  It was all so long ago. But the passion lingered, as well as the great love they had shared since childhood. Sarah and Caleb—their love was as natural as breathing, as necessary as the sunrise.

  “I’m going out for a while,” Caleb told her softly. “I’ll be right outside on the veranda. I won’t go far.”

  Sarah force
d a smile. He knew the toll this birth was taking, knew her inner strength, not her physical strength, kept her going.

  “It’s a boy,” she whispered. “I just know it’s a boy.”

  He leaned down and kissed her forehead. “It doesn’t matter, Sarah. Just so you and the baby are all right.”

  Her breathing quickened again. “I forgot how bad the pain is,” she managed to get out before squeezing her eyes shut and arching against another ripping contraction that tore at her abdomen like a witch’s fingers. He started to stroke her hair again.

  “No,” she panted. “Don’t touch me.” Caleb frowned and drew back. “It almost … hurts more,” she groaned. “I have to do it … alone. I’m … sorry,” Sarah breathed out then as the pain subsided.

  “I understand,” he told her. “I’ll be close by.”

  He had been uncomfortable in the room anyway. His worry for Sarah had sent him to her side, but his Indian blood told him that he shouldn’t be in the room at all. No Indian man was ever present in the tipi when his woman was having a baby. It was bad luck.

  He walked out of the bedroom on the wide planks of the oak floors. This was his second house. His first had been a cabin, but it had been burned by marauding outlaws years ago—when his Cherokee wife, Marie, a son and his mother-in-law had been killed. Caleb still bore scars on his hands from trying desperately to save them from the fire. He had one son left from that marriage—twelve-year-old John, who was three-quarters Indian and looked it.

  Years before that, even before falling in love with Sarah, Caleb had had a Cheyenne wife. They were both still very young when she was killed by Crow Indians, but she had left him his first son, Tom. At twenty, Tom was tall and broad and very Indian like his father, but with the bold, dark eyes of his mother. He was a strong, handsome young man, eager as a young colt, sometimes reckless in his ways as Caleb himself had been at the same age.