FOUR

Charles stood just within the entry of the sod house. It was late morning and the sun had not yet reached the angle where it would penetrate the interior, so the room was dark. He couldn't see the boy at first, but he could hear his fitful breathing. Apparently he felt comfortable enough to sleep.

That was one small victory.

Caroline had sent a basket filled with food and drink with him. Crossing over to the table beside the bed, he placed it on its surface and then sat on the low chair beside it. He hadn't really had time to think about his injuries. His side was aching mightily and his head smarting. It was nothin' he couldn't deal with – he'd suffered far worse at the hands of the Gallenders – but, still, he would much rather have been in the house doin' what Doc Baker had told him to do than sitting in this bare bones place waiting to talk to a hostile young man who had come huntin' for him but wanted nothin' to do with him.

Why had he come, he wondered?

The only place he'd had frequent contact with the native population of the land was in Kansas, and that had been precious little. Of course there had been the incident with the blizzard a few months back where Jack Lame Horse had saved his life. Still, that hardly qualified as contact. Lame Horse hadn't uttered a single word in the time they'd spent together. Besides, there was little chance this young man was connected to the Sioux chief. He was too young for one. If he was fifteen or sixteen, as he suspected, the boy would have been born just as the war ended or after when the Indians were on the run. On top of that, it was obvious he had white blood.

Lame Horse didn't.

As he sat there, thinking, Charles became aware of the fact that he was being watched. The boy had not moved, but his breathing had evened out and he had grown still. He pretended not to notice, allowing the young man to grow comfortable with his presence. He knew that natives thought white men were hasty; that they were impatient and unable to maintain silence for long.

Charles leaned back in the chair and balanced his head on the wall and waited.

And waited.

Outside the sun shifted toward the west and its beams cut in through the window, painting golden squares on the earthen floor. The heat made him sleepy, as did the drone of the flies that hovered over Caroline's basket of food. Charles shifted and straightened up. He should be outside working, though he was sure Doc Baker would be happy that he was sitting still.

His lips quirked at the ends.

Truth to tell, he really wasn't good at sitting.

"You are Charles Ingalls?" a surly voice asked, breaking the silence.

Charles blinked and looked. The young man was sitting up, propped against the wall behind the bed.

He nodded. "Yes," he said. "I heard you were lookin' for me."

The Indian boy was staring – no, glaring at him. "How do I know you are Charles Ingalls?" he demanded.

Charles shrugged. "Well, plain and simple, you don't. You'll have to take my word for it."

"The word of a white man," the boy spat.

"Well, unless you thought 'Charles Ingalls' was an Indian, which I doubt, you knew what you were gonna find when you got here. A white man's word is the only word I've got."

"It is useless!"

Charles hesitated. Then he stood up. "So is this conversation," he said as he headed for the door. "There's food in the basket." His hand on the latch, he turned back. "I'll come back later for the – "

"Do not go."

Was that a plea or an order?

With a sigh, he turned back. "Look..." Charles paused. He knew natives were not free with their names, but... "Unless you want me to call you, 'boy', I'd suggest you – "

"The white men call me Alan," the gruff youth answered sullenly.

Which meant it wasn't his true name.

Charles nodded. "Thank you, Alan. Now look, I understand you don't trust or like me. That's all right. I don't trust or like you either." When the boy looked startled, he went on. "We don't know each other. Trust is something that's earned. So is friendship. I'm not askin' either of those of you. All I'm asking, Alan, is for you to tell me why you felt it necessary to risk your life to come to Walnut Grove to find me?" When the boy said nothing, he added, "I cant help you if you don't tell me what kind of help it is you need – "

"I need no help!" Alan spat. "It is...my grandfather." The boy's chin jutted out and before he said it, Charles knew. He saw it in the determined set of his face; in his hazel eyes. "I come for Jack Lame Horse."

Releasing the latch, he returned to the chair and sat down. The sunlight that penetrated the window illuminated the boy's rail-thin form. It was rigid.

"Jack Lame Horse sent you?" he asked, surprised.

Something passed over the boy's face – emotions running like quicksilver. "Yes," he replied.

When he said nothing else, Charles asked, "Is he in trouble?"

"He is in the white man's jail!" the boy snapped. "He is to be hanged!"

Charles sat up. "What for? Not for the war? He was pardoned by Abraham Lincoln."

"So you know. So I and grandfather know. The judge does not know, nor the white men who will condemn him to hang on other white men's lies!"

Charles wondered what the story was here. If the boy was Jack Lame Horse's grandson, that meant the Sioux chief had a daughter or a son who went against their tribe to marry a white. It was obvious from his speech and clothing that Alan had not been raised on the reservation, and yet he just as obviously hated white men.

"Where are your mother and father?" Charles asked.

Again, emotion flitted over the boys face – pain, grief, hate, rage...

"They are dead," he said and then fell silent, as if that explained it all. "There is no one but grandfather and soon, he too will be dead."

Charles pondered Alan's words for a moment. Though he put on a brave front, the boy was scared.

"What do you think I can do?" he asked at last.

It was about all the boy could do to say it, and when he did, it came out as a statement and not a request. "Come with me."

"Come with you and do what?" Charles asked, astounded.

"You are a white man. The white man's law will listen to you. Grandfather told me," Alan paused. When he continued, it was almost more than he could do to say the words, "Grandfather told me you are a good man. He said... He said you saved him from the white man's law before. You must do so again."

Charles shook his head. "I can't just up and take off, I have crops to bring in, and –"

"Grandfather also told me that he saved your life." Alan's voice was low; intense. "Is this not true?"

He remained silent a moment. Then he nodded. "Yes, it's true."

Alan held his gaze.

"Then tell me this, Charles Ingalls, is not yours the life-debt to repay?"

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Caroline stood by the door listening to Mary read to Carrie. The two girls were sitting in their youngest daughter's downstairs room. From where she was, she could see the sunlight strike her eldest's hair and turn it to spun-gold. Mary was such a help to her. She didn't know how she would have managed without her. Still, she worried about the child at times. Mary was a deep thinker and less apt to express her opinions than Laura. When she'd talked to her about the young man her father had brought home and the trouble it might bring them, the blonde girl had simply nodded. Mary said she would be sure to keep Laura out of trouble when they went into town in the morning to drop off the eggs at Olesons.

That was it.

It had been hard to talk to her daughter about, well, what she had to talk to her about. Mary was still a child but, at nearly eleven, was old enough to understand what went on between a man and a woman. It was hard in a small house to hide much of anything and, as Charles liked to remind her, the joy of the marriage bed was a blessing God had visited on man and womankind. Still, no matter how natural or, Caroline smiled, pleasurable it was, it was still hard to talk about. Jim Rhodes' ridiculous insinuations were something she would have rather overlooked, but it was inevitable – with Harriet Oleson carrying tales – that one of the girls' schoolmates would repeat something a parent or neighbor had said. It was best it came from them instead. Mary had listened with her head down and nodded and again, said nothing.

Unfortunately Mary was also old enough to begin to understand the fallen state of man.

Turning away from the girls, the blonde woman crossed back over to the stove to check on the chicken cooking in the pot. She was going to make chicken pies and needed to get the meat done at about the same time as the crusts, which was why she needed Mary. Glancing up as she passed the ladder to the loft, she wondered how much Charles had told Laura. While their middle daughter was younger, she was just as, if not more perceptive than Mary, especially when it came to her Pa. The child was fierce in her love for her father and would do anything to protect him or his name. Caroline sighed as she shoved a lock of loose hair out of her eyes and took hold of the spoon.

There was definitely another black eye or bloody nose in Nellie Oleson's future!

The thought of her little girl taking down Harriet Oleson's tall bully of a daughter brought another smile to Caroline's face along with a healthy dose of guilt. The Reverend Alden would be the first to remind her that the good Lord would have no part in wishing harm to another human being.

Then again, to sin was human...

"Caroline, do you have a minute?"

She turned to find Charles' strong, muscular frame silhouetted in the open doorway.

"What do you need?"

He hesitated and then said, "I'd like to talk to you...outside."

"The chicken's almost done," she replied. "Give me about five minutes."

"I'll be in the barn."

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Five minutes later, leaving the house and the chicken in Mary's hands, she went to find her husband. She found Charles sitting on a hay bale and staring down at his hands, which were linked between his knees. Caroline went to his side and sat down and placed her hands over his.

"What is it?" she asked.

"I have to go away," he said without preamble.

The blonde woman blinked. Her gaze shot to the sod house, which was visible through the open barn door. "With that boy?"

"Alan," he said, not looking at her. "His name is Alan."

The loneliness of weeks spent without her husband with all that entailed opened up before her. Sad to say, her reply sounded churlish, "Whatever for?"

He glanced at her. "I know. The timing's bad. I'll talk to Isaiah about keepin' a watch on the crops and doin' what has to be done."

When he said no more, she prompted in a softer tone, "You didn't answer my question."

Charles reached out and took her hand. He squeezed it, and then stood and walked to the door. With his hands planted firmly in his pockets, he looked out.

"There's a debt I've got to pay," he said at last.

Caroline went to join him. He was staring at the sod house, thinking, no doubt, of the young stranger within its earthen walls. As she wrapped her hands around his arm, she asked, "A debt to this boy?"

"No. Before last night, I didn't know Alan existed."

"Then to who?"

He looked at her. "To Alan's grandfather."

"His...what? His grandfather?" She could tell Charles was serious, but she had no idea what he was talking about. The boy was of mixed heritage. He would have two grandfathers – one white and one a red man. But if Charles had never seen him before, how could he know either of them? They'd only known a few Indians you could count as anything more than strangers – Soldat du Chene was one. Another was...

"Jack Lame Horse," she said, suddenly understanding.

Charles smiled. "You can see it, can't you? It's in the boy's eyes. In the way he stands."

She let out a sigh of her own. "He's certainly proud."

"But not too proud to ask for help," Charles countered. "The authorities are planning on hanging his grandfather."

"Charles, no!" She released him and stepped back so she could meet his troubled gaze. "Hasn't that man been through enough? Marshal Anders said he'd been pardoned by Abraham Lincoln. Can someone do that?"

He blew a breath out of his nose and shook his head. "It's the frontier, Caroline. It's easy to plead ignorance when it suits your purpose – and hard for the truth to catch up before it's too late."

She shook her head. "But what can you do about it?"

Charles shrugged. "I'm not sure I can do anything, but I have to try. Alan seems to think my telling my story, of how Lame Horse saved the life of a white man – and one he didn't know – might move the court toward leniency." His hand found her cheek. "I owe Lame Horse my life, Caroline. I have to go."

"Where?" she asked, her voice small.

"Mankato. Since the war's over, its a civil case. The circuit judge is due there in a week or so."

"A week or so?"

It came out as more of a whine than she intended.

"I know. It means I might be away near a month all told. Caroline, I don't want to go, but I don't see how I can say 'no'."

There were times and – if she was honest – there were many, when she had a momentary wish that Charles was a different kind of man, one who took obligations a little less seriously, who was more prone to take than give; a man who put himself and his own needs first before others. Then, of course, she chided herself for being a fool – if he was, he wouldn't be Charles.

"I understand," she said at last.

"Do you? Do you really?"

The blond woman caught her lip between her teeth and nodded.

"But?" he asked. "Go ahead, tell me. I want it all out in the open between us."

Her eyes shot to the sod house where the boy, Alan, was – the boy who had already brought her husband harm. Looking at Charles again she noted the black eye, the bruising around his lips – the way he held himself as if his body was hurting.

"Can you trust him? Alan, I mean?" she asked at last.

He shrugged. "Truth to tell, Caroline, I don't know that I can. But if I can't hold my own against one scrawny teener boy, then I'd better toss in my hat."

"It's not..." She paused. She knew how he was. Charles would say she was worrying needlessly. Still...

"It's not Alan I'm worried about, but other men who might mean him and you harm. Someone who might come looking for him and find you."

Charles met her worried gaze. "That kind of men are cowards, Caroline. I'm not afraid of them."

That was another thing she wished now and then, that Charles would be just a little bit more afraid.

Anyhow, it was pointless to argue. He'd made his mind up to do what was right and she could only love him the more for it.

"When will you leave?" she asked.

"As soon as I talk to Isaiah and get things in order. Most likely around suppertime. I don't think its wise for Alan to remain here any longer than he has to, for a number of reasons."

The safety of his home, wife, and children being the chief one.

"I'll pack your things," she said as she began to move past him.

Charles caught her arm and halted her. "I'm going to ask Isaiah to stay a night or two. I don't want you and the girls alone in case someone gets it in their head that Alan is still here. Once they know I've gone, it should be all right."

She shivered. "Charles, you're frightening me."

"I don't mean too. It's just, well, there's no telling what Jim Rhodes might do. He might come out to take the boy and when Alan's not here..." Her husband paused. "Jim might have been drinking again, you know? I'll just feel better knowin' there's a man in the house 'til things quiet down."

"The girls will certainly be happy," she answered with a forced smile.

"But not you?" he asked, a twinkle in his eye.

Charles knew she loved Isaiah, even though she didn't always love the chaos that came along with him.

"Me? Well, let's see, the girls will beg Isaiah to sing and dance, and then they'll beg me to let them stay up until all hours. They won't get their sleep and neither will I, so they'll be grumps about getting out of bed and doing their chores and... " She rolled her eyes. "What's not to be happy about?"

He cocked one dark, thick eyebrow. "You know you'll love every minute of it."

It was true. She would.

But she'd never admit it to him.

"Maybe," she replied with a little smile.

"Ma!"

They both turned toward the house. Mary was standing in the open door with Carrie behind her.

"Yes, dear?"

"I think the chicken's done. Should I take it off the stove?"

With a glance at her husband, she called back. "I'll come check it."

"I'm gonna head over to Isaiah's," Charles said.

Caroline nodded. "Tell him no teaching Laura how to spit. And no chewing tobacco. And absolutely no liquor."

"So no fun?" he asked, wearing a mock frown.

Her hands went to her hips. "Charles Ingalls, whatever am I going to do with you?"

Her husband circled her waist with his strong hands and drew her into a kiss. In the distance, she heard Laura giggle. Her middle child must have joined her sisters on the stoop.

"What're you laughin' at, Half-pint?" Charles called out.

"You gonna kiss her again, Pa?" the child called back teasingly. "You know Ma don't like it when you do that in the middle of the day."

He looked at her. "That true?"

Caroline rolled her eyes. "Well, someone around here has to maintain some sense of decorum."

"Oh. Decorum, huh?"

She scowled. "Yes, decorum. Some sense of respectability."

"You hear that, Laura?" Charles shouted back. "What do you think your Pa's responsibility is?"

"To kiss Ma in the middle of the day!" all three girls shouted back.

Amidst a chorus of laughter – and before she could think to stop him – Charles swept her up off of her feet and carried her toward the house.

"Charles, really!" she chided. "What are your daughters going to think?"

"Think? There ain't nothin' to 'think'," he replied. Looking at the girls, he asked, "What do you know?"

"That Pa loves Ma and Ma loves Pa right back!" Laura shouted.

"Pa loves Ma!" Carrie echoed. "Ma loves Pa!"

Mary's smile was shy. "And kissing's okay even in the middle of the day."

Charles turned back to her. His green eyes were sparkling.

"You hear that, Mrs. Ingalls. I got no choice."

Caroline glanced at her girls and then back at their father. Before Charles could think to do anything, she caught his face in her hands and, amidst gales of girlish giggles, planted a very wet and very noisy kiss on his lips.

No, he didn't.

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Alan Drummond scowled as he watched Charles Ingalls interact with his children and wife through the sod house window and considered all he knew about the white man. From what he had been told, it seemed Ingalls was a good man – a white father and husband who had risked his life and family during the late spring blizzard to save his red grandfather. Then, again, he had been told many things in his brief life.

Most of them lies.

The young man turned to stare into the sod house, noting the soft luxury of a white man's world even here in what amounted to little more than a store room – curtains on the windows, a wooden bed with a thick coverings; more than enough food, stacked in sacks and kept in kegs against a time of hunger that might not come. He had found there were many motivations for a white man's actions. Self-sacrifice could be one of them, but more likely his actions had to do with some kind of personal gain. The fact that the U.S. marshal, Jim Anders, had been waiting at the abandoned house where Charles Ingalls took his grandfather spoke more words than his tongue. Alan believed Jack Lame horse's capture was the white man's intention all along. After all, Ingalls was not new to the frontier. He would have known better than to risk going out in such a storm. Alan's jaw grew tight along with his fingers as they clenched into fists. He blew out an enraged breath of air and sucked it in with even more anger.

It had been a trap.

Still, even if he chose to believe the story he'd been told, that Ingalls had known nothing of Anders' presence in the cabin, it proved nothing. While Ingalls might have been grateful for his life and may have helped his grandfather to escape, had the circumstances been different and the farmer's family not in danger, he would have gladly joined with the marshal in betraying the old chief and handing him over to the white man's justice.

The young warrior spit in the dirt.

He knew white men. They were all the same.

It was even possible that this white man had a hand in what was happening to his grandfather right now. Ingalls could have gone to the authorities after arriving home in Walnut Grove. He could have wired the authorities and told them where his grandfather had gone in order to keep his own neck out of a noose. With such a man, nothing could be taken on face value.

Life had taught him that.

Alan turned back to the window and watched Ingalls' wife take the hands of two of her children and lead them into the house. The sight of her sickened him. His mother had been the same – thin, of medium height and blonde; a pious Bible-quoting white woman who claimed she loved a native man, and then did all that was within in her power to destroy who and what he was. A woman who wheedled and cajoled until the warrior who was his father gave in, choosing to live as a white man and to pretend that the child she bore him had no red blood in his veins.

A woman who watched as the man she 'loved' grew quiet and then discouraged, and finally so miserable and dejected that he sought his own destruction and found it at the end of a bottle.

Alan turned from the window as memories of past betrayals drove him to pace. Then there were his white grandparents, a minister and his wife who took him and his mother in when his father vanished without a word. His white grandfather was a hard man who showed little emotion other than rage. His white grandmother, who quoted the white man's Bible just like his mother to justify her actions, hated natives but loved her daughter. He was accepted on the condition that no further word ever be uttered about his being an Indian. His skin was light and so he was able to pass for a child of mixed blood. Spanish was acceptable. Even saying he was from the West Indies. But he could not say what he truly was and so he began to wither within.

Then there was Jack Lame Horse. The old chief had not proven to be what he seemed either. His native grandfather had sought him out, catching him in the woods one day when he was hunting. He had been ten or eleven years old at the time and knew nothing of the ways of the native. Without his mother's knowledge, the two of them began to meet regularly, and Jack Lame Horse began to teach him all he needed to know to survive off the land – how to hunt with a spear, how to clean a carcass with the knife, how to be stealthy and to walk with no sound so he could pass like a shadow before men's eyes. But most of all his red grandfather taught him of the Creator of his people; of a loving God who accepted him for who and what he was. For five years Jack Lame Horse came, bringing joy into the misery of his existence and then –

One day he came no more.

At first he waited patiently and then, he began to seek him. The first few weeks he waited at their meeting place, sleeping overnight at times. Then he began to travel farther afield, worrying his mother with his absences that grew longer as the months progressed. The last time he had been gone about two weeks and had returned to the ultimate betrayal. His family's desertion was complete. While he had been away searching the hills, a plague had swept through the local towns, carrying off his elderly grandparents and leaving his mother distracted and bereaved. He cared for her for a month before she too died. As the doctor pulled a sheet over her ashen face, he said it was of a broken heart. Alan knew better. His mother was bedridden and could not speak. During those long days he spoke to her of what he had been doing, of the time he had spent with his native grandfather; of his desire to live with his father's people and to worship his grandfather's god.

His mother died because he shamed her too much to live.

After burying his mother he left the town where she had been born, intending never to return to the world of her people. Using the skills Jack Lame Horse had taught him, he began once again to track the older man. It was during this time he heard of Charles Ingalls and of the incident during the late spring blizzard. The men who rode with the marshal had been in Mankato and the white man's fire water had loosened their tongues. They spoke of how his grandfather had come close to being captured and hanged. One man named Brush said he would have been if not for the intervention of the man he had been watching only moments before. Another said Charles Ingalls was a clever man and that, by pretending to help the Indian, he had saved his own neck. Alan stopped pacing and stared out the window again. It had been his wish to talk to his grandfather about it and to find out if indeed there was such a thing as an 'honest' white man. Sadly, any hope of that had been dashed several days before in Sleepy Eye. A fat man in an apron standing in front of the general store said the last of the Sioux Chiefs had been captured and was awaiting trial in Mankato. They couldn't 'nail the bastard', the storekeeper said, for the deaths of the hundreds of white men he had killed, but God had found another way of making things right – they'd caught the filthy savage stealing a horse and he was going to hang as soon as the circuit judge came to town.

God.

The white man's God.

He hated Him almost as much as he hated white men.

Alan went to the bed and sat on its edge. Ingalls had said he would be back and that they would leave tonight. The journey to Mankato would take nearly a week. A week in which time he would come to know this white man's soul.

And decide if he would let him live.