Hidden Secrets

"Lou! Lou honey, what is it?"

Lou's eyes snapped open, and saw Kid leaning over her, shaking her gently. She looked around wildly, but Boggs was nowhere in sight. "Where is he?"

"Who?" Kid asked, confused.

"My father. He..."

"Er...Lou, your father's dead, remember?"

She shook her head. "No. He was here. He...he said that I was bad and..."

"Lou," Kid moved his hands from her shoulders to place them on either side of her face, preventing her from looking away. "Lou, Boggs is dead, remember? I had to shoot him, he was about to kill you. You must have been dreamin'."

Lou shook her head again. "It was so real."

"Why don't you tell me what happened," Kid let go of her face and knelt down in front of her.

"When Rosa came to sit with Buck, I meant to go to bed, but I couldn't stop readin' the diary. Then, I don't know. I started rememberin' what happened back then, you know, when my father...died. I remembered what happened, how it happened, everythin'. Suddenly he was in the room with me."

"Your father?" Kid asked, a note of incredulity in his voice.

Lou nodded. "I told him he was dead, but that didn't stop him. He... he said that I had a nice place here, but I shouldn't have married his killer to get it, that I was always a bad little girl, and that he was gonna kill me for takin' Jeremiah away. He was comin' at me when suddenly you were there, shakin' me."

"Lou," Kid started gently. "There is no one else here. You must have fallen asleep readin' the diary and dreamt it." He picked up the diary from the floor, where it had fallen, and closed his eyes when he read the undated entry, where MaryLouise stated that Boggs' men were under orders to kill baby Louise. He had known that Boggs had no qualms about threatening Lou, that was why he had been forced to kill the man. But to threaten an innocent baby?

"Come to bed, Lou," he said finally. "It'll do you no good to read it anymore tonight."

"I don't think I can sleep, Kid."

"Try. You'll make yourself sick if you keep on like this. The diary will be there in the mornin'." He looked at her expectantly, and under the tenderness and concern of his gaze, Lou reluctantly nodded. Kid stood and swept her up in his arms, and carried her to their bed.

"Where's Louise?" was the first thing out of Jeremiah's mouth the next morning when Kid entered the kitchen.

Aware that Louise's sleep was fitful after her interrupted night, Kid let her sleep in when he got up to do the morning chores. "Sleepin'. She was up half the night readin' the diary."

"Ma's diary?"

"Is she gonna let us read it?" Teresa asked.

Kid hesitated. "I'm not sure," he said finally.

"Why not?" Jeremiah challenged. "She was our ma too."

Kid thought of the entry he read the night before. "She hasn't decided yet. Due to what's been written, Lou may want you to wait until you're older so you can understand."

"I'm not a kid, Kid."

Kid fought back a smile, thinking that Jeremiah sounded exactly like Jesse had not so long ago. "But you're not exactly a grown up either, Jeremiah. Don't try to grow up too fast, it's not worth it. Besides, Louise wouldn't know how to take it."

"You know I'm not a little kid. Can't you tell Louise that?"

"He'd have better luck walkin' barefoot on prickly pears, than changin' Lou's mind," a new voice spoke up.

Kid whirled around, and saw Buck standing in the doorway, swaying a little. "She's not that bad," he said.

"Oh yeah?" Buck turned to Jeremiah and Teresa. "Lou's subborn. When she gets an idea in her head, nothin' and no one can talk her out of it."

"Shouldn't you still be in bed?" Kid asked, changing the subject.

"It doesn't hurt that much," Buck's pallor belied his words. "Besides, I never could stay in bed long. Especially when I smell food like that. I take it Lou's not cookin'."

"No, it's Rosa's cookin', but don't make fun of Lou's cookin'. It seems she was holdin' out on us. She can cook, and pretty good, too."

"What? But I always thought..."

"Yeah, well, she always said that she couldn't cook, but I think that was because she knew what we were like and didn't want to get stuck cookin' when Emma or Rachel were away. So she left us to Hickok's porridge."

"Which was worse," Buck laughed, then cringed in pain.

"Buck, you really oughtta be in bed. If you're up when the doc gets here, he'll think we're not lookin' after you."

"No he won't," Lou came in, catching the end of the conversation. "Doc Seyton knows I can take care of patients, and he knows how stubborn you men can be."

"Buck just said you were stubborn as a mule," Jeremiah grinned.

"I did not!" that fellow protested. "I never said anything about mules."

"Well Buck's got a big mouth," Lou told her brother, "and you got an even bigger one for repeatin' what he said." She put some bacon and toast on two plates, and handed one to Buck, just as Rosa, who had been silent through the whole exchange, poured two mugs of coffee.

"I thought you were sleepin' in," Buck commented to Lou.

"Never was much for sleepin'," Lou replied. "Besides, I had a really strange dream."

"Bad?" Kid asked.

"No, just weird. I was playin' in an Indian village, with a little boy, about seven or eight years old. I seemed right at home."

Buck choked on a piece of toast at this. "You all right, Buck?" Kid asked, pounding on his friend's back, forgetting the shoulder wound.

"I won't be if you don't stop hittin' me."

"Sorry."

"What happened?" Teresa asked.

"Bit of toast went down the wrong way," he said quickly. Something telling him not to mention the hazy memory to Lou in front of the children. But Lou was already looking at him as if there was something he was not saying.

Lou just could not concentrate on her chores. Normally she was glad to have work to do; she still could not get used to not "working" like she did when the Pony Express was still running. But today, when there was an unusual amount of household chores to be done, Lou found her mind wandering. She realised that she would much rather be reading her mother's diary than her chores.

Rosa seemed to sense this. "Why don't just read it?"

"Huh?" Lou snapped out of her reverie.

"You just started folding up the dirty washing. Somethin' tells me your mind is not on the work."

Lou blushed. "Sorry." She put the dirty laundry back in the basket. "I don't know where my mind is today."

"I do. It's in that book you were readin' last night. I can see that you're anxious to get back to it. There's not much left to do here. Why don't you go on upstairs and finish readin' it? Let me do my job."

Normally Lou would argue, but her desire to read the rest of the diary was stronger. She thanked Rosa and went upstairs to get the diary. Picking it up from where the Kid had left it, she stared at the fireplace, wondering if she should light it. Deciding that it warmer downstairs, she headed back down to the sitting room, where she found Teresa curled up on the floor, reading.

"School still closed?"

Teresa started, looked up at her sister, and nodded. "It snowed a lot last night, Kid couldn't get the wagon past the gate. He and Jeremiah rode into town to get some lumber to fix the barn."

"Where did they get the money?"

"Buck gave it to them. He's outside with Wilson and Taylor, talkin' about what they need to do."

"Where did Buck get the money?"

Teresa shrugged. "That you will have to ask him. Is that Ma's diary?" she indicated the book in Lou's hands.

"Yeah."

"Can I read it?"

"When you're a lot older. You're just too young to understand it now, honey."

"What about Jeremiah?"

"Same deal." With that, Lou sat in the big arm chair and opened the book where she left off the night before. This is strange, she thought, The next entry is dated almost four years later.

April 21, 1846

I have not written in this diary for so long, for fear that Eamon would find out about it and punish me as he has done before. But something happened today that need to write down just to make sense of it.

As have previously stated, we are living quite near an Indian village, Kiowa, I think. Not near enough to cause any troubles with them as yet, but just a little too close for my tastes. I have nothing against the Indians, but Eamon's activities have me concerned. If trouble starts, the Indians may think that Eamon and his friends are threatening them and respond with a war party to wipe us all out. But I am digressing.

Today, Eamon decided to take us on a family outing, probably to give the illusion that we are a happy, normal family, and draw away from any suspicions about us. There have been some soldiers around, asking a lot of questions about "Boggs".

As we were driving along, we passed a group of Indians. I think they were Kiowa, but I don't know enough to be sure. There was a woman, a squaw, I believe is the correct term, with two children, both boys; one about eleven or twelve, the other a year or so older than Louise. The younger boy had a fairer complexion than the woman or older boy, he must be what some of Eamon's associates call a "half-breed", although I do not like to use the term. It sounds so derogatory.

When we drove the wagon past them, there was a flicker in Eamon's eyes, as if he recognised them or something. Which should be impossible. Whatever it was, it made Eamon speed the wagon up, as if he wanted to get out of there in a hurry. It was at that moment that the wheel decided to break.

Eamon hopped down from the wagon to take a look at the wheel, giving the squaw and the children, I assume they were hers, a good look at him. The squaw took one look at Eamon and started to scream. She yelled out a lot of things that were hard to understand, a mixture of her native language and broken English.

One thing I did understand was the words, "you took me!" She yelled this just as Eamon motioned for me to get down off the wagon so he could fix it. I just stood there, with Louise in my arms, not comprehending what this woman meant. Then she said something that made it all clear.

"You took me, gave me child. No man want me now. No man want to father White Man's child. Running Buck hurt by other children. Other children don't like him, don't let Running Buck play with them. You take him! Running Buck your son."

"I don't know what you are talking about!" Eamon snapped, pushing her aside.

I walked over to her. "You must be mistaken," I said. "This is my husband. I can assure you, he would not have done what you say he did." The problem was, as I said that, I realised that I really was not sure. From what I had seen over the past six years I have been married to him, he certainly was cruel enough to rape a woman. But rape an Indian? Judging from what he say about them, I would have thought it was beneath him.

But my thought, my feelings were moot right then. Because this squaw was insisting rather strongly that I was the one who was mistaken, that I was calling her a liar, that I was blind to the actions of my husband. She could have been right for all I knew, but before she could say anything else, Eamon roughly pushed her aside and told her to get on her way before he did something to hurt her. She left then, screaming back at us.

Afterwards, when Eamon fixed the wheel, and we were on our way, I ventured to ask about what the squaw was claiming. He got real angry that I doubted his word on the matter. and threatened retribution for that lack of trust, but after that, he denied ever meeting the squaw before. He could not deny that the child was half-while, that much was obvious; he just suggested that the squaw was akin to a prostitute, and mentioned a few things that I would not dream of ever writing in here, that were that crude.

I would never have thought this before, but what if? What if Eamon did rape that squaw, or one like her? Would I ever know? Does Louise have any half-brothers or sisters out there because my husband was unfaithful, and cruel?

Onto Chapter 5