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doing right well. He’s got seven kids, Pa. You have seven more grandchildren by Zeke.”
    The man grunted a sarcastic laugh. “A lot of good it does me. I’ll never see them.”
    Danny sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “Pa, you can’t blame him—”
    “Damn him!” the old man blurted out, slamming a fist against the table. “Why doesn’t he come back, at least for a visit! He’s been cleared of all those murder charges! He’s a free man now in Tennessee, and still he stays out there with the damned Indians!”
    “Pa, you don’t understand him. Zeke
needs
to be out there. He’s so much more Indian than white, Pa. If he came back here, he’d suffocate on civilization. And it isn’t the murder charges that keep him away. It’s the
memories
, Pa! All the bad memories of finding Ellen raped and murdered and their little son killed by those men.
White
men, Pa! Friends of Ellen’s who turned on her and tortured her just because she went to bed with a half-breed. A man doesn’t forget those things, Pa. They burn in his gut for all his life! Even though he’s married again and has all those kids, he still remembers. He hates Tennessee!”
    The old man waved him off. “You always did stick up for him. Even after he murdered all those men so ruthlessly and showed his savage Indian blood.”
    “Pa, he can’t be blamed for that! I might have done the same thing if someone did that to my wife and son! Now at last he’s been cleared from the Wanted posters. Be glad for that much. It was a long time ago and it’s over. He’s happy now. He’s got a good woman, a damned good woman. She’s even from Tennessee herself.”
    The man turned hopeful eyes to Danny. “What about her? She’s Tennessee born and bred. Surely she’d like to come back for a while.”
    Danny shook his head sadly. “Not if Zeke doesn’t want to come. Abbie wants only what her husband wants. She knows how painful it would be for him to come back here. If he needs to be with his people, then she’ll put up with the hardships of that life. That’s the kind of woman Abbie is. There aren’t many like her.” He took his father’s hand again. “But she has told Zeke a time or two that he should come and see his blood father, Pa. She’s a good woman. She knows a man ought to have things right with his father. Zeke’s never coming back has nothing to do with Abbie.”
    Hugh Monroe nodded and rose, walking to a window and watching raindrops glisten against the glass, lit up by the lantern light. “It’s me, Danny. It isn’t the bad memories that keep him away. It’s me, and that’s the hell of it. He’ll never forgive me for dragging him away from his Cheyenne ma all them years back. He’s hated me since he was four years old. That’s a lot of years of hating.”
    Danny studied the once-powerful man from whom he and Zeke got their commanding physique. “Why’d you do it, Pa?”
    The old man kept watching the raindrops, studying them silently for several quiet seconds. “I missed home,” he replied. “I missed Tennessee. Gentle Woman could never have survived here among white people. It was common, Danny-boy, for a trapper to take a squaw. Not many men like me had feelings for their Indian wives. They were more of a necessity than anything else. When I got hungry for Tennessee, I knew I had to leave her behind. But—” he shook his head and swallowed—“I couldn’t leave my boy behind. I couldn’t leave my
son
, Danny! I loved him. I wanted him with me. But he never understood that. He thought I just brought him back out of meanness, to prove I’d had a squaw. I don’t know how many times I tried to explain to him that wasn’t so. But he’d look at me with them … dark, accusing eyes, and I knew he never believed me. I … never meant for him to suffer like he did. I never thought … people could be so mean. And I guess I never took notice how bad he was really being treated. Your own ma never loved him, I admit