Rapture's Gold

by Rosanne Bittner

  He sighed and rubbed at his eyes, knowing that he didn’t really want her to be easy. He would have been disappointed, for he liked her…too much perhaps. Maybe he even loved her. Who could tell? He couldn’t get close enough to her to know the real Harmony Jones. And although this trip would be torture, having to just watch her, it was better than finding out she was wild and easy. Yet he could not help but picture her wild—wild in his arms, in his bed, wild just for Buck Hanner and no one else.

  “I’m sorry, Shortcake,” he said. “I just wish you’d relax. We’ll be traveling for several days, then getting O’Toole’s claim back into working order. We can’t spend the next two weeks or so together with you blowing up over everything I do and say.”

  She sniffed. “I know.” She rode a little closer. “Don’t be mad, Buck. I know there are probably a lot of other things you’d rather be doing. I just—I have bad memories about something that happened. When you touched me to wake me, I thought I was someplace else…that you were someone else.”

  “Well, whether it was Jimmie or some other man, I’d like to get my hands on him. I meant what I said—about all men not being the same. It’s true, you know. What about Brian O’Toole? He was good to you, wasn’t he?”

  She nodded and sniffed again.

  “There. You see?”

  She wiped at her eyes. “He was like a father to me, and he was married. Besides, I was a little girl when he found me. It wasn’t like…like…you know. It just wasn’t the same, that’s all.”

  He pulled his hat down a little. “Well, if you’re thinking I’ve got thoughts about making a woman of you, forget it!” he told her, sounding angry again. “The way you act sometimes, I feel like your father myself, and there are plenty of women in Cripple Creek who can take care of me a lot better than a little girl who knows nothing about men and who has no goal in life beyond getting rich so she can be independent. So put your mind at ease, Shortcake!”

  He headed out again, and she watched him for a moment. She did not want him to be interested in her that way, yet when he told her he wasn’t and spoke of other women, she felt that painful little ache in her heart again. It confused her.

  He did not look back this time, and she rode out after him, following the mules. Nothing more was said for several hours. He didn’t even ask if she needed to stop. Toward dusk he halted, telling her to stay on her horse. He pulled his rifle from its boot and took aim. In the distance she saw a rabbit. He fired once but it kept running, and amid a string of curses he quickly cocked the lever of his Winchester and fired again. On the second shot the rabbit flipped over several times, then lay still.

  “There’s our supper,” he announced, dismounting. “Damned fast little buggers. I should have had a shotgun.” He ran out to the animal and came back carrying it by its hind legs. She felt relieved when she saw a smile on his face. He was so handsome when he smiled. His blue eyes seemed to match the sky, his sandy hair the earth, his tanned face the rocks. Indeed, his tall, lean body looked as hard as the rocks, and there was an animal-like grace to his walk. Never in her life had she studied a man, compared a man to anything, thought of a man as handsome or otherwise. She had avoided men, never trusted them. For that matter, how could she trust another woman? Hadn’t her own mother abandoned her? That left her with nothing and no one, and she was better off that way, better off looking at Buck Hanner in the same way she looked at everyone else.

  “You ever clean and skin a rabbit?” he asked her.

  “No, sir.”

  “Well, you’d better learn, Shortcake. You’ll be shooting some of your own game once I teach you how to use that rifle. The more fresh game you can kill, the longer your supplies will last. Remember that.”

  He took a piece of rawhide and tied it around the rabbit’s hind feet, then to a strap on his horse. When he mounted up and rode off again, the rabbit dangled from the side of his horse. The sun was nearly gone, and they were in the middle of a broad, green valley, headed into the mountains beyond it, before he finally halted and dismounted again.

  “We’ll make camp here,” he told her.

  She looked around but saw no water. “I wish I could take a bath,” she commented. “I feel so gritty.”

  “Most people are that way a good share of the time out here.” He untied the rabbit. “You can take a bath tomorrow night if you want. We’ll be by a stream then. I know a good place to make camp another day’s ride from here.”

  She suddenly wondered how on earth she would take a bath when there was a man around that she still didn’t trust. Worse than that, they were in the middle of a wide, flat valley, with no trees or rocks to shield them, and she had a very pressing personal matter to attend to. She dismounted, watching him begin to unsaddle his horse.

  “I’ll show you how to clean a rabbit as soon as we lay things out and make a fire,” he told her.

  She swallowed. “Buck?”

  He met her eyes, setting down his saddle. “Yeah?”

  “I…there’s nothing around here…to hide behind.”

  He grinned, his eyes running over her quickly. “Well, Shortcake, I told you not all men are rotten. If ever you’re going to trust me, here is a chance for the supreme test.” He bowed. “I shall turn around. And then when you’re through, you will have to do the same, because then it will be my turn.”

  Her mouth fell open. “I’d never!” Her eyes narrowed with anger. “How dare you think I would even think of…of looking!”

  He laughed lightly and turned around. “Hurry it up. I have pressing matters of my own.”

  She watched him a moment, then backed up and took some paper from her saddlebags. She turned and ran then, as far away as she could, hurriedly taking care of matters and watching him every second. He did keep his back to her, and she began to relax. So far he had kept his word about everything, and she had to admit that when he’d asked her about what had happened to her, what Jimmie had done, his eyes had been filled with only kindness and care. Besides, it was becoming obvious he really did think of her as a child. All well and good.

  She ran back to her horse. “I’m back,” she said timidly. Then she turned and began unsaddling her own mount, and he walked a distance away. For the first time she wondered what men really looked like. Her encounter with Jimmie had left her thinking they were surely hideous, the things they did to women brutal and ugly. How had Becky gotten used to it? How could she have looked at Brian with such love in her eyes, returned from their honeymoon looking so joyous? And she’d had several miscarriages. There was only one way a woman got pregnant. It gave Harmony a chill to think of it. She would never have a child, that was sure. And maybe children weren’t so wonderful after all. Hadn’t her own parents hated her so much they’d abandoned her? Hadn’t she just been in the way? Harmony Jones wanted no children. She would not bring another life into this cruel world.

  “We’ll tether the horses,” Buck’s voice broke into her thoughts. To her relief he didn’t even mention what they had just done. She had thought he might tease her. “There’s nothing here to tie them to. Take the bridle off Pepper, and I’ll drive the stakes into the ground.” He removed long stakes from a pack on one of the mules, along with a sledge hammer; then he began pounding them into the ground, allowing each animal room to graze. He tied the front foot of each mule to a stake before he tied Indian and Pepper. The horses tossed their heads and whinnied, as though voicing their gratitude at being unburdened for the night. Buck laughed, petting each of them, talking to them. It was obvious he knew and loved horses, and Harmony was curious about his past.

  She thought about Fast Horse. It had hurt him to talk about his Indian friend who had died. Apparently Buck Hanner had suffered some painful losses himself…Fast Horse…Mary Beth. Maybe he understood her more than she thought. Maybe he had his own hurts and haunts.

  “Now for the rabbit,” he told her, throwing down the sledge hammer. “Get out a pan and bring it over here.”

  He-walked to whe
re he had laid the rabbit and she hurried over with a pan, kneeling down beside him. She wrinkled her face when he slit open the belly and pulled out the insides. “It’s really nothing, Harmony,” he declared, suddenly talking to her as if he considered her a responsible woman. Surely he did. Hadn’t he said he admired the way she’d stood up to Wade Tillis? But sometimes she did act like a child. She vowed to be more mature from now on, for she wanted him to think of her as an adult. “Clean it right away, and if you can’t eat all of it, smoke the meat real good and it will last a long time. Don’t be afraid of a little blood and guts. It can’t hurt you. Letting it repulse you is foolish. People have to survive.” He deftly cut off the head and began skinning the body. “The knife I picked out for you is a good one. It should make this easy for you, even though you’re not as strong as I am.”

  He laid the carcass in the pan then. “Let’s get a fire started. It’s a good thing I packed a couple of bundles of kindling on the mules. That’s why I cut those big pine branches earlier when we were near trees. Sometimes you come to a place where there isn’t a damned thing to make a fire with, like this one. Tomorrow we’ll have no problem. We’ll be up among those pines in the mountains.”

  He walked to the mules, rinsed his hands with canteen water, then cut one big branch that had been tied to a mule. He dragged it over away from the animals, and retrieving a hatchet, he began to chop it into shorter pieces. “Get out some of the kindling. We’ll have that rabbit roasting in no time. It’ll make us a damned good supper,” he told her.

  Harmony quickly obeyed, bringing an armful of small pieces over to the spot. He started to tease her for bringing too much but thought better of it. He didn’t want to spark another flare-up and spoil the night. She set the wood down, and he used the hatchet to chop at the ground, pulling away some of the grass to create a bare spot.

  “You don’t want to make a fire right in the grass or you might burn up the whole valley. And while I’m thinking of it, be damned careful in the pine forests, Harmony, especially later in the year when it’s extra dry. Right now the ground is wet and soft, but later, if you build a fire wrong or leave it untended, you’ll be roasted girl meat. That’s a sorry way to go, and a whole mountain and all the animals on it can be burned up.”

  He leaned down and carefully lit some stacked kindling. As soon as it flared orange, he added a couple of pine logs. “Not the best wood, but it will do,” he told her. “It’s a good thing I found a nice dead tree. Green wood doesn’t burn. Remember that. Even this stuff is going to make a lot of smoke. If we were in Indian country, we could never make this fire. They’d see us miles away.”

  He whittled at a couple more pieces of wood, then stuck them into the ground so that Y-shaped ends stood up. He gestured for her to fetch the rabbit, while he whittled a point at the end of a sturdy piece of kindling. Holding the rabbit, he pierced it with the pointed stick and hung the stick so that each end caught in an upright stick. “There.” He began to turn the rabbit. “Roast bunny.”

  He met her eyes and she smiled with delight. “That wasn’t so hard,” she commented.

  “Of course not. I’ll let you do all of it next time. You’re a smart girl and a survivor, Harmony Jones. You’ll do okay.”

  She studied his blue eyes. “Do you really think so?”

  “Sure I do. If I didn’t, I never would have agreed to bring you up here. You’re young and strong and determined, and you learn easy. That’s a good combination. Spread out some blankets and take out the rest of those biscuits. They’ll be hard as rock but better than nothing. No sense wasting them. And get out your fleece jacket. It will get damned cold in this valley tonight. It’s always cold out here at night. Wear your jacket under your blankets when you sleep.”

  She nodded.

  An hour later found them sitting on either side of the fire, eating roast rabbit. The night was smooth and dark, the sky a mass of stars. Harmony licked her fingers and rubbed at a full stomach; then she lay back, placing her head against her saddle. She looked up at the stars.

  “Seems like we’re the only two people on earth,” she commented.

  “That’s why I like it out here. A man can really do some thinking on life out here.” He tossed a bone aside. “Even a woman—those who bother to think at all, like you.”

  She sighed deeply. “Do you think I’m crazy, Buck?”

  He laughed lightly. “Sometimes. Mostly I think you’re a little mixed up and you’ve probably had some bad experiences that have made you a determined girl. I admire what you’re trying to do, Shortcake, but you are asking for a lot.”

  A wolf howled in the distance, and she pulled her blankets up closer around her neck. “I know I am. But I don’t care. All my life I’ve never had anyone or anything I could count on, or that was all my own. Even Brian wasn’t really mine. He never formally adopted me. But he did leave me the gold claim, and I’m going to make something of it. I’ll be rich; then I won’t be scared anymore. Nobody will be able to threaten me just because I’m a girl and young and poor.”

  “Well, Shortcake, sometimes there’s more to life than money. Money can make a person hard to live with.” He rolled a cigarette and leaned against his own saddle. The fire glowed warm orange in the black night. “I’ve seen men come out here and get rich, then change so much nobody knows them anymore. Some get rich and lose it all right away, and some—most—never find anything worth coming out here for. I find what some men will do to find gold amazing, what they give up—sometimes their very lives. For most it’s just a dream.”

  She watched the glow of his cigarette as he lit it. “I suppose. Brian left a wife behind—Becky. She’d lost a lot of babies and was depressed. I think they weren’t getting along very well when Brian left. Finally she got sick and died. Poor Becky. During the last years she was always so sad. And Brian must have felt terrible, knowing she died alone. That’s why he collapsed, I’m sure of it.”

  “That’s what I mean. He left behind security, a wife, a supply store, a brother, and a young ward who depended on him—all for gold. He never found any until he was out here over two years, and even that doesn’t amount to much.”

  “Just the same I’m going to pan it. Five dollars a day sounds like a fortune to me, and I’ll get out more than that.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  She studied the various star formations. “You think there’s another earth out there someplace, Buck?”

  He looked up. “I sure as hell hope not. One mess like this one is enough.” He took a drag on his cigarette. “It isn’t the earth itself. This land is beautiful. It’s the people on it that make it ugly. I think the perfect earth would be one just like this, with all its beauty, and no people except Indians.”

  “Indians!”

  “Yup. They’re as much a part of nature and the earth as the animals. Then everything would be in perfect balance. It’s the white man that spoils everything.”

  “Well, you’re a white man.”

  “So? That’s still my opinion.”

  “It’s a strange one.”

  “No stranger than a little girl going into the mountains to pan for gold alone.”

  She laughed lightly, and his heart skipped a beat. He realized he had seldom heard her laugh. It was beautiful—melodic. What a nice sound! If only he could make her laugh more often! If only he could understand exactly what made her laugh and what made her angry.

  “That’s a nice sound, Shortcake. A girl your age should laugh more and not be so serious about everything.”

  She kept watching the stars. “Can’t help but be serious when you’re in my situation. But you’re right. I should laugh more. I’ve never had much reason. It feels kind of good to laugh.”

  “It’s a release, just like crying.”

  She nestled down under her blankets. “I’ve done all the crying I’m going to do. Good night, Buck.”

  “Sleep tight.”

  She closed her eyes, deciding she’d just have to tr
ust him. It was too late for worrying about whether she could or not, and she was too tired to worry anyway. She pulled the blankets over her face to keep her nose warm.

  Buck smoked quietly, watching her. He thought about getting under the blankets with her. Fact was, they’d both be a lot warmer that way, and he’d be glad to hold her just to keep her warm. But he knew she’d have none of that. He’d scare her clear back to St. Louis if he even suggested it, or maybe get a piece of lead in him from that little pistol she carried. And to think that tomorrow night she even wanted to take a bath! His self-control surprised him, but he knew once this trip was over, he’d best hightail it back to Cripple Creek and pay some prostitute a visit. But it wouldn’t be the same, not the same at all. One was lust and the other was love. One satisfied a temporary need, the other satisfied a man to his very soul.

  He’d keep his distance—for now. But someday Buck Hanner was going to be Harmony Jones’s first man—her only man. He’d make sure of it.

  Chapter Eight

  Buck brushed down the horses with more vigor than necessary, trying to keep his mind off the fact that Harmony Jones was bathing naked in a stream not far away. He guessed if there were prizes given for self-control, he would most certainly deserve the biggest award. A man couldn’t ask for a better opportunity to take advantage of a sweet young virgin, but knowing Harmony, it most certainly would be against her will, and that would take away the beauty of it. He wanted the beauty, wanted her willingness, wanted her first time to be right and good so she’d have no haunting nightmares about it.

  Indian snorted and tossed his head, and Buck smiled. “You and me both, boy,” he grumbled.

  He could hear the roar of the nearby waterfall, which drowned out her splashing, and he envisioned how she must look—silken skin, tiny waist and flat belly; untouched breasts, full and firm; soft, golden hair in secret places. She’d be all pink and white and silken.