“Where’s Guffy?” he yelled, in an effort to be heard over the storm.
“Guffy stayed in town—the other driver went for help—”
Gage turned the horse back toward the station, and they were halfway up a high drift when the animal slipped, shrieking in terror, and flung them both off, one in one direction, one in the other.
Unhurt, the horse scrabbled the rest of the way up the slope and ran, reins dangling, making damn good time considering that the snow was knee-deep by then. Gage made a mental note to enter that gelding in a race, should he live to round it up again.
He hurried back down the bank and hauled Jessica out of the snow with one powerful wrench of his arm. If she’d been in danger before, she was far beyond that point now, soaked to the skin as she was, and covered in snow. He had to find shelter within a matter of minutes, or she would die for certain.
He lifted her into his arms and followed his instincts through the trees, for he was too cold by then to think. He had one aim and one aim only: to keep her alive. If he failed, his own life wouldn’t be worth a damn.
He fell to his knees, once, twice, a third time. And each time, he got up again, impelled by a force no preacher had ever told him about. His chest burned, his arms and legs were numb, but she was there, huddled against his chest, and he could feel the beat of her heart. It was enough to keep them both going.
“Don’t you dare die, do you hear me?” Gage gasped, close to her ear.
He was all but walking on his knees when the corner of the mine shack came into view, and at first he thought his eyes were fooling him. He’d read about things like this happening to people lost in storms—sometimes they saw visions and thought they were safe, only to succumb a few paces further on.
The door gave when he put his shoulder to it, and he heard the creak of ancient hinges, even over the incessant shrieking of the wind. The whole place swayed when he carried Jessica over the threshold and, for a moment, he just stood there, braced to take the weight of the roof, along with about two feet of accumulated snow and ice.
The walls held, by some miracle. Slowly, awkwardly as a man moving through some thick substance, Gage laid Jessica down on the board floor and forced the door closed. There was next to no light in the place, but once his eyes adjusted, he could see that the structure was about eight by eight.
Lying at his feet, Jessica groaned, and his mind, befuddled by the cold, sent a sluggish message to his hands and legs. After searching the cabin, he found nothing at all to wrap her in, though there were a few twigs and floorboards that could be used to get a fire going. Hastily, he flung his hat aside, then peeled off his coat and started to put it around Jessica.
Another communication sank in. She couldn’t stay in these wet clothes.
He stripped her, something he’d imagined doing once or twice, but in his imagination the circumstances had been different. Her bare skin was blue-white, and he bound her up in the coat, then set himself to rubbing her hands and feet, trying to get the circulation going again.
She whimpered. “That … hurts.”
“Good,” he said. “You’re alive.”
“Where … ?”
“Never mind where we are. Hell, I don’t even know. Right now, Jessie, I want you to think about those babies, and how much they need you. I want you to think about the newspaper, and—and—” He’d been about to say me.
Her eyelashes fluttered against her blue-and-red blotched cheeks. Good God, even frozen half to death, she was beautiful. “And—what?”
“Never mind.”
She opened her eyes and looked right through to his soul, or so it seemed to him then, in those frantic moments. “You … came looking for me. In this storm.”
“Damn good thing, too,” he said, shivering now as his flesh began to thaw. In many ways, that was the most miserable part, the painful process of getting warm again. “You’d be dead if it wasn’t for me.”
Unbelievably, she smiled. “Why? Why would you take such a chance?”
“Why the devil do you think?” he snapped. His teeth were chattering by then, and he was in no mood to chat. “Because I love you, that’s why!”
She stared at him. “You do?”
“I said it once, woman. I’m not going to say it again. Not here, not now!”
She laughed, actually laughed, with both of them right there on the verge of their just rewards. “You have to be the stubbornest man in the world,” she said. Then, with a smile on her lips, she closed her eyes and drifted off someplace just beyond Gage’s reach.
CHAPTER
7
SHE DREAMED they were back out in the storm. She had never been so cold; her clothes clung to her, sodden with melted snow, and she had long since lost all sensation in her limbs. She knew Gage, who was carrying her close against his chest, believed her to be unconscious, but she could not summon the stamina to let him know she was awake.
In those agonizing minutes, when she knew that she was close—so very close—to death, she wanted to live with a passion more ferocious than any she had ever felt before. She wanted to live for the twins, for this impossible man who would not let her die, for herself. For the first time ever, she was centered squarely within herself, sure of who she was and whom she might become, given the chance.
She had the strength for only a scrap of a prayer, but it shone from the innermost regions of her heart like a beacon, and she was sure God and all his angels could see it. Please …
She closed her eyes then, and found that she was lying in a dark place. She was warm, though, and she could have sworn that Gage had his arms around her, that he was holding her close against him, as if he feared to let her go.
*
The cold jabbed Gage awake like a sharp stick; he sat up, careful not to disturb Jessie, and looked around. That old shack seemed flimsy enough to fall over at any second, but it was one hell of a lot better than nothing.
The fire was nearly out; he’d have to get dressed and find more wood. Drawing in a hissing breath, he left the cocoon he’d shared with Jessie and dragged on his pants and shirt, then his boots. The wind was still screaming fit to deafen anybody, but Jessie didn’t so much as stir.
Suddenly fearful, he crouched and laid the backs of his fingers to the pulse at the base of her throat. A long sigh escaped him. Her heartbeat was strong and steady. For the moment, nothing else mattered much.
Once again he assessed their surroundings. It was almost as cold inside as out, and the place smelled of mice and other such critters, but there were walls and a roof, and a rusty little woodstove stood in one corner, draped in shadows and cobwebs. He’d started a fire in it—how long ago?—before lying down with Jessie.
Moving as quickly as his still-stiff limbs would allow, Gage scrounged in the darkness for whatever scraps of firewood he might be able to find. In the end, he broke up a crate and stuffed that into the belly of the stove, along with a collection of miscellaneous debris. A blaze caught, spawned by the dying embers of the first fire.
After adjusting the damper on the chimney pipe—he could only hope there were no birds or mice nesting along its twisted length—he set to smashing the remaining furniture, which consisted of one broken chair and a bedstead. Then, when the chill was beginning to subside a little, he lay down beside Jessie again, wrapping the coat around both of them.
He was only human. He enjoyed it a little.
Damn. She was naked. He felt like a kid, peering through a hole in the bathhouse wall. He could feel her softness right through the legs of his trousers and the longjohns beneath.
He positioned her as close to him as he dared, reminded himself that he was a gentleman, and closed his eyes. Try as he might, he couldn’t sleep. He just lay still, in a sort of dull-headed haze, listening to the wind and breathing in the scent of Jessie’s hair. Even there, in that filthy, tumbledown shack, she smelled good.
Hours had passed, by his calculation, when he couldn’t stand it anymore. She felt too col
d, too still. “Jessie?” He patted her cheeks. “Hey, Jessie … wake up, will you?”
“I’m … awake,” she said, in a sort of languid whisper. “Where … ?”
“We’re in a shack,” he reminded her. “Remember, I told you before. Just about the time we were both done for, here it was, like it was waiting for us.” He glanced warily up at the rafters, which moaned with every snow-laden gust of wind. There was no telling how long it would be before it gave way, but he didn’t plan on mentioning that. “Jacob and June-bug must be praying again.”
She smiled, and the plain courage of that twisted something in Gage’s heart.
“If anybody’s praying for us,” she said weakly, “I hope it’s them.” She sighed, and her lashes, thick and golden brown, fluttered against her cheeks.
“Stay awake, Jessie,” he commanded and, still kneeling beside her, he drew her up onto his thighs and held her like a child. In a few minutes, he’d start walking her around the cabin in hopes of getting her blood flowing, but he didn’t want to push her too hard. “Did the driver say where he was going?”
She frowned, as though it was an effort to remember. Her expression was dreamlike, and Gage feared that she might be losing ground again. They were by no means out of the woods.
He got to his feet, hauling her with him, and made her walk. “Jessie,” he said. “Listen to me. I know you want to sleep, but that’s the worst thing you could do right now. I shouldn’t have let you close your eyes. You’ve got to keep moving.”
“But … I’m so numb… .”
“Yes,” he agreed. “When things start hurting, then you can lie down. Now, what did he say?”
She thought long and hard. “Who?” she asked, after all that effort.
At least she’d gotten that far. “Did he try to make it to Springwater? Jessie, I’m talking about the driver. Was he headed for town?”
She nodded, but not until they’d been around the inside of the cabin half a dozen times. “He said I’d be safer where I was …”
Gage hoped the poor bastard had succeeded in reaching the station, because he’d almost certainly be dead of exposure by now if he hadn’t. The coach had broken down only about two miles from the station, and in good weather a man could walk the distance without undue wear on the soles of his boots. In a blizzard, it was another matter; there were a hundred ways to get lost, even if you knew the terrain, the way the relief driver surely did. He hoped the McCaffreys would offer up a few prayers for him, too.
“I have to lie down now,” Jessica said.
“Not yet,” Gage replied.
“I suppose we’ll have to spend the night here.”
He sighed. “We’ll be lucky if we get out of this place in a week, Jessie.”
She looked up at him with wide eyes. “A week? I’ll be ruined!”
“You’ll be dead, if you go out there before the weather clears.”
“What will we do for food? For firewood?”
Her brain was thawing out; he supposed that was a good sign, though pretty soon her fingers and toes would probably start paining her pretty seriously. “You let me worry about the practical things, and just think about getting warm, all right?”
“But you must be cold, too… .”
He had been, but Jessica’s presence had worked wonders. His skin stung and his bones ached, but except for those things, he felt about normal. “I’m fine,” he said. “I could do with some whiskey, though.”
She laughed, and if he’d had any doubts that he loved her, they faded to nothing right then. He wished he could tell her again, now that he was sure she’d hear, but he just couldn’t bring himself to take the risk. If she rejected him, nothing else in his life was going to matter for a long, long time.
And so they walked, and walked, and walked some more. Finally, when he was sure it was safe to let her rest, he allowed her to lie down again, and she tumbled immediately into a deep and healing sleep. He ferreted around the dingy cabin and found some old gunnysacks to place over her in lieu of blankets, and listened with increasing dread to the shriek of the wind. Every new gust seemed to rattle the whole place, and a couple of times he really thought it was going to collapse into a heap, burying them both in snow, rafters, and rotten shakes. Worse, they were running low on firewood.
He didn’t have much choice in the matter; they could freeze to death, or he could go out in the storm and see what he could scare up to stuff into the stove. As for food, well, they’d just have to do without that, because no sensible rabbit or deer was going to be out in weather like that, and the bears were all hibernating.
After making sure Jessica was covered as well as possible, he drew a deep breath, opened the door, and stepped over the threshold. The cold hit him with an impact that stole his breath and nearly blew him right back inside. He ducked his head and kept going.
*
Jessica was alone—she knew that before she even opened her eyes—and an awful sense of fear rose within her as she sat bolt upright. It was then that she realized she was covered in empty potato sacks and wearing Gage’s long coat—with nothing underneath. She vaguely remembered him removing her wet clothes, but at the time she hadn’t cared. Even now it didn’t bother her half as much as knowing he was outside somewhere in that screaming storm, with nothing to protect him from the cold.
She sat up and tossed the potato sacks distastefully aside, only to pull them over her again when she felt the chill. The fire in the little stove was almost out, and she could see her breath. How long had Gage been gone? Suppose he was lost out there somewhere, wandering around in circles, as winter travelers were known to do?
She opened the stove door and prodded the embers inside with a stick she’d found lying on the floor. Then, awkwardly, she got up, holding the coat and the gunnysacks around her in a vain effort to keep warm, and looked about for a window. There was none. The small amount of daylight entering the cabin was coming in through a wide crack in one of the walls.
More for something to do than because she thought it would do any real good, she hunted around until she found more scraps of burlap. She wadded them into a ball and stuffed them into the gap, and when she did, the whole structure trembled and gave a long, low groan of protest. A shower of dust fell from the rafters.
Jessica gasped and squeezed her eyes shut, inwardly bracing herself, but by some miracle, the roof and walls held. Jacob and June-bug must be praying, she thought. It couldn’t be her pitiful little “please” that was keeping that building up.
She was just beginning to panic again when the door opened and Gage came in. He looked like a snowman come to life, with his hair and eyebrows frosted and his clothes coated with gleaming white, but he was carrying an armload of wood.
Jessica pushed the door shut behind him, alarmed by the way he moved as he labored across the small room and dropped the precious branches and chunks of bark on the floor. He was stiff and slow as he opened the stove and began shoving things inside.
“Gage Calloway,” she said, more out of fear than conviction, “you’re a damn fool. Why, look at you—you’re covered in ice from head to foot!”
He didn’t say anything; he just knelt there, in front of that fire, willing it to burn. Finally the blaze caught, and Jessica could not be sure whether it was the warmth that drew her, or Gage himself. She got down on the floor next to him and began peeling off his clothes, just as he’d done with hers earlier, when they’d first found shelter, and he didn’t fight her. She removed his shirt first, then his boots, then his trousers and longjohns. He was trembling, and his skin was an alarming shade of blue.
Instinct caused her to open the coat and enclose him inside it with her, and for a while, they shivered together. It would have been a mercy if she hadn’t been so conscious of his nakedness, but she was. Indeed, she felt the contact with him in every pore and follicle. His member, which she had not been able to avoid glimpsing in the process of undressing him, took on a life of its own and pressed itself int
o the soft flesh of her belly, hard and growing harder with every passing moment.
“Sorry,” he said. His teeth were chattering.
“Shhh,” she replied, and they lay down together and slept, entwined.
When Jessica awakened again, the room was warmer, and Gage had gotten up and put his clothes back on. She was glad he couldn’t know that she missed the feel of him, the strength and substance of him, pressed against her. She was careful not to look at him until the heat in her cheeks had subsided a little, even though the cabin was dark, but for the light of a single tallow candle.
“It’s warm,” she said.
“I tore up some of the floorboards,” he replied. “And I found a jug of corn liquor underneath. Want some? I’m afraid it’s the closest thing to supper we’re going to get.”
Jessica seldom took spirits, but this was surely a time for exceptions. She nodded, and he brought her the jug, held it to her lips, and tilted it so that she could take a sip. It was like drinking kerosene, and she sputtered and coughed so violently that Gage felt called upon to slap her on the back, but the moonshine produced a spill of fiery warmth as it flooded down her throat and burned its way to her stomach.
“More?” he asked.
She shook her head and wiped her mouth with the back of one hand. “Let me recover for a little while first,” she croaked.
He laughed and took an enormous swallow, hooking one finger through the small handle and supporting the jug on the side of his elbow and upper forearm.
She peered at him in the dim light. “What are we going to do?”
He considered awhile, took another swig of whiskey, and answered, “Wait. This storm has got to let up sometime, and when it does, folks will be out looking for us.”
“We could get awfully cold and hungry before that happens,” she said sensibly.
He set the jug aside and cupped her face with one hand. “They’ll find us, Jessie,” he promised.
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