The Savage Heart

They were all in agreement that they should march on city hall as soon as possible. A date was set and leaders designated.

“I can’t go,” Nan said with a long sigh. “Dennis will be home all day.” She barely repressed a shudder. “I wouldn’t dare leave the house.”

“You could sneak away,” a woman standing nearby suggested.

“Oh, I couldn’t do that,” Nan said quickly. “He doesn’t even like me coming to one of these meetings each week. I have to be so careful to make sure he doesn’t know how involved I am. So it’s best if he isn’t home when I creep off for a rally or an added meeting.” Her thin shoulders rose and fell as if they bore a heavy burden. “He works an extra job away from the telegraph office on Mondays and Thursdays, and he’s real late getting home, so I can get out and he doesn’t know.”

What a horrible way to have to live, Tess thought. She wondered, not for the first time, what sort of home life poor Nan had. Men could be such brutes!

TESS WAS STILL FUMING about Dennis’s treatment of Nan when she got home. Matt was on his way out, and she met him on the front steps. He looked gloriously handsome in his expensive vested suit. She remembered how his hair used to look hanging straight and clean almost to his waist, and wondered if it was still that long. Since he hid his braid these days, she couldn’t judge the length.

“You work all the time,” she accused gently, smiling.

“I’m addicted to fancy gear,” he teased. “I have to make enough to support my expensive tastes.” His large black eyes went over her, in her neat skirt and blouse under a long overcoat. “Another meeting?”

“Yes.”

“Where’s the friend who goes with you?” he asked, frowning when he noted that she was on the street alone.

“On her way home in the carriage I hired,” she explained. “It lets me off first.”

He nodded. “You be careful,” he cautioned. “You’re a daisy back east.”

“I can still shoot a bow and arrow.” She winked. “Skin a deer. Track a cougar.” She leaned closer. “Use a bowie knife.”

“Stop that.”

“Sorry. It slipped out.”

He glowered. “I don’t use it. I threaten to use it.”

“There’s a difference?”

“There certainly is. A very big difference, miss.”

“I’ll reform,” she promised, smiling. There were deep lines around his mouth and nose, and dark circles under his eyes. “Poor Matt. You’re tired to death.”

“I spend long nights watching people I’m hired to watch.” He studied her face under the wide-brimmed felt hat she was wearing. “You don’t look much better.”

“Nursing is a tiring profession, too, Matt. I spent my day sitting with a patient who had a leg amputated. He was knocked down and run over by a carriage. He’s barely my age.”

“Young for such a drastic injury.”

“Yes. And he was a baseball player.”

He grimaced.

“He wants to commit suicide,” she said. “I talk and talk, hoping I’ll dissuade him.”

He touched her cheek. It was cold from the winter wind. “I felt that way myself, once,” he murmured. “Then this pretty little blonde girl came and held my hand while her father dug bullets out of my hide. And soon life grew sweet once more.”

“Did I make you want to live?” she asked. “Really?”

He nodded. “My whole family was dead. I had nothing to look forward to beyond hating the white soldiers or trying to avenge my people. I was in such terrible pain. But the pain grew manageable, and I saw the futility of trying to fight a veritable ocean of whites. What is it you say, better to join than fight them?”

“If the odds are against you.” She liked the feel of his strong, warm fingers on her cheek. She stood very still so that he wouldn’t move them. “Is it so bad, the way you live now?”

He studied her face. “If I were a poor man, it might be. I have too many advantages here to feel sorry for myself.” His eyes narrowed. “Tess, try not to get too embroiled in the women’s movement, will you? Some of these women are very radical.”

“I promise not to go wild with a hatchet in any local bars,” she said demurely. “Does that reassure you?”

“Not a lot,” he said. “Your father worried about you.”

Her pale eyes became sad. “Yes, he did. I miss him terribly. But I couldn’t very well stay on at the reservation. The job was his, not mine.”

“They’d probably have hired you to teach, if you’d asked,” he commented.

“Possibly. Still, there was the persistent lieutenant. What a temptation he presented.”

His brow rose. “Temptation?”

“I was tempted to put a bullet through him,” she clarified. “I was at Wounded Knee, too, Matt. I know he shot women and children and old men.”

His hand slowly lowered. “You should go inside. It’s too cold out here for idle conversation.”

“You can’t imagine how you look when I mention the massacre,” she said softly. “I’m sorry. However painful the memories are for me, I know they’re a hundred times worse for you.”

He gazed down at her with his heart twisting inside him. She was pretty, but her attraction went so far beyond the physical. She had a soft heart and a stubborn independence that made his breath catch. She had, he mused, a savage heart.

“Why are you smiling?” she asked.

“I was thinking how you go headfirst into a fight,” he replied. “And how soft your heart is.” He became solemn. “Don’t wear it on your sleeve, little one,” he said softly. “The world can be a cruel place.”

She saw the lines in his hard face and reached up hesitantly to touch the ones between his dark eyes. He flinched and she jerked her fingers back.

“Sorry!” she cried, flustered.

His expression grew even more grim. “I’m not used to being touched. Especially by women.”

She laughed nervously. “So I noticed!”

He relaxed, but only fractionally. “I’ve grown a shell since I’ve been here,” he confessed. “And now I’m trapped in it. I’m rich and successful. But under it all, I’m still a poor ragged Indian—to people more shortsighted than you are.”

“I’ve only always thought of you as my friend.”

“And I am,” he said solemnly. “I’d do anything for you.”

“I know that.” She drew her old coat closer and smiled up at him, her gaze intent. “I’d do anything for you, too, Matt.”