Wild Mustang

by Jane Toombs

Feeling heat rise in her, she turned abruptly and walked away. Is this what happened once you made love with a man? That every time you saw him, arousing thoughts popped into your head?

  “Hey, wait,” Sage called from behind her. “You’re going too fast.”

  Which had the ring of truth, as applied to her recent behavior as well as her present pace.

  Later, helping Shane and Sage unload at the lakeside cookout site, Laura kept glancing at the weird, grayish-white encrusted formations sticking out of the water around the lake.

  “What are those?” she asked finally, pointing.

  “They’re tufa formations, hardened mineral,” Shane said. “The pyramid-shaped one over there is what the lake was named after, though not by us.”

  “By explorer John Frémont in 1844,” Sage added triumphantly. “That was one of the questions on our history exam, and I got it right.”

  The large blue-green lake had none of the beauty of Lake Tahoe, up in the mountains, but Laura decided it had a certain stark grandeur, set as it was among all but barren hills. “Do the cutthroat trout you mentioned to Nathan live in the lake?” she asked.

  “We’re trying to reestablish them.”

  A van pulled up, discharging five girls who swooped down on them. Sage followed them to the edge of the water, where they all took off their shoes to wade.

  More cars dropped off girls until there were ten cavorting barefoot in the lake shallows, shrieking, and laughing.

  “Listen up!” Shane shouted. “It’s time to get the fires started.” When they’d gathered around him, he said, “There’ll be two fires, so you’ll split into teams of five each. I’ll do the choosing.”

  In nothing flat he had five girls gathered around him, the other five around Laura. “If we were in the mountains we’d have lots of wood for fires,” he said. “The desert’s not so generous. We could find fuel to burn if we had to, but it’s important not to disturb the plants around here, so we’re going to cheat and use charcoal.”

  “On the Plains, they used to use dried buffalo chips,” one of the girls said.

  “You know what those chips really are,” another commented and both groups burst into giggles.

  Soon Shane had teams arranging the rocks around each of the two mounds of charcoal. He then demonstrated the safest way to start a charcoal fire at one of them.

  “Now,” he said, “we’ll pretend Laura doesn’t know anything about this. My team gets to tell her how to start her fire, step by step, and her team gets to correct their mistakes.”

  Once the charcoal was glowing, the girls laid the grill over the fire, being careful to balance it on the rock containment. Then each scout wrapped her ear of corn in foil and seasoned her meat patty.

  Laura cooked her patty right along with the girls, layering the meat between two slabs of Indian bread when it was done. The corn on the cob wrapped in aluminum foil took a bit longer.

  While all this was going on, Shane discussed how food would have been cooked in the old days, asking questions of each of the girls. Laura was amazed by his patience with them.

  “Man, this is way easier,” one of them said.

  “Next time, we’ll try it the old way,” Shane said. “Then you can tell me whether easier tastes better or not.”

  Toasted marshmallows came last, their sweet, hot stickiness reminding Laura of her girlhood camp days. “We used to sit around a campfire and tell stories after we ate,” she reminisced.

  “We got two fires,” Sage said. “So how about if we get two sets of stories? Shane’s team can tell Paiute stories and Laura’s team other stories.”

  “Okay, if we take turns going back and forth,” a girl said. “Who goes first?”

  Remembering a children’s counting game, Laura volunteered to do the one potato, two potato rhyme. The scout she ended with, Maria, got to be the first to tell a story.

  “Well, this was a long time ago,” Maria said, “when the animals could talk like people. Everyone but Black Spider was afraid of Scorpion because of his sting. She wasn’t ’cause she had a poison bite, so they became friends. Then everybody got twice as scared.”

  The story went on to tell how Coyote tricked the two into becoming enemies. “And they still are right now today,” Maria finished. “Lucky for us.”

  As the storytelling went on, Laura was struck by the difference in Paiute tales and the ones her team was telling, which sometimes seemed to be rehashed TV episodes. Then it came time for Shane to tell one.

  “When the animals could talk,” he said, “one day Coyote decided to catch Cotton-Tail and eat her for supper, even though Wolf had warned them not to eat one another. Since he knew she was faster than he was, Coyote had to be clever. Jack-Rabbit learned of the ruses Coyote planned, and he tried to warn Cotton-Tail, but she was so sure she could outsmart Coyote that she wouldn’t listen.”

  The story told of several narrow escapes before Coyote finally trapped Cotton-Tail and ate her for supper. “That made Wolf so mad about being disobeyed that he took away the animals’ ability to speak and made people to replace them,” he finished. “Whose fault was this?”

  “Coyote’s,” a chorus of voices answered.

  “Yes,” he agreed, “but Cotton-Tail was partly to blame, too, because she refused to listen to someone who wanted to help.”

  Laura had the feeling his story was meant for her, but she didn’t have a chance to think about it because her turn came next. What on earth kind of story could she come up with that would top his? Obviously no condensed fairy tale would do it. She decided to tell Tim’s story, softened some and changed a little. She started by saying, “Once there was a stuffed green frog named Frederick Ferdinand.”

  Though she’d meant to tell how Tim acquired the frog, instead she found herself saying, “Freddie lived with a little girl who loved him the most of all her toys, but after awhile she got scared that something bad would happen because she liked Freddie too much and so she gave him away. Even though she didn’t want to, she knew it was the only way to save herself.”

  Laura stopped, realizing she’d gotten badly off track. Rattled at what she’d said, it took considerable effort for her to force the story back into the pattern she’d intended, telling how Freddie the Frog finally came to be a little boy’s best friend. “Because, you see,” she ended, “even though bad things had happened to him in the past, Tim wasn’t afraid to keep what he loved.”

  There was a silence when she finished, broken by Sage saying, “That’s a really sad story.”

  “Why? Tim got to keep the frog,” Laura protested.

  “But the little girl gave him away so she didn’t have anything,” Sage said. “That’s sad.”

  There was a moment’s silence until one of the girls said, “Let’s sing.”

  Everybody, including Laura, thought that was a great idea. Sage’s words still echoed disturbingly in her mind and she needed a distraction.

  She was pleased to find the girls knew many of the old camp songs she recalled, and she sang along with them.

  “Time to make sure the fires are completely out,” Shane said, when there was a pause. “Each team is responsible for its own fire. Then each team gets to check how good a job the other did.”

  With the lake close at hand, water took care of any remaining hot coals. As they were finishing the task, parents began arriving to pick up their daughters.

  “I liked being on your team,” one of the girls told Laura and was echoed by others.

  “I hope you come again,” Maria said. “Shane doesn’t know the words to the songs as good as you do.”

  “I hope I can,” Laura told her truthfully. Though she knew she couldn’t make any promises, she’d really enjoyed the afternoon with the scouts. And Shane. It had almost seemed like they were a family, the two of them and Sage, parents taking the time and effort to help out with the scout troop their daughter was in.

  Of course they weren’t a family at all, even if it had felt that way. For some
reason the thought depressed her.

  Back at the house, Sage dashed to the barn to check on Star, leaving Shane and Laura to unload the truck.

  “I’ll take you as a partner any day,” he said. “Especially since you know more of the words to the songs than I do.”

  She smiled at him. “I suspect you just like someone who follows your lead without complaining.”

  “Who doesn’t?”

  He had a point, she admitted. “I had a good time.”

  Shane grinned. “You made the day for Sage—and, I suspect, most of the other scouts.” He didn’t add that, for him, her being there had added a lot of points to his own evaluation of the day.

  As they walked toward the house, she said, “I looked in your workroom earlier. Did you discover the secret inside that piece of wood you were examining?”

  “I’m not sure,” he said slowly, unused to talking about what he hadn’t begun to work on yet.

  “Maybe it’s too early for me to be asking,” she said, as though reading his thoughts. “Don’t tell me until you’re ready.”

  He nodded. Her sensitivity about his work made him rethink what he’d intended to bring up this evening—the beginning of her story about giving away her frog. Instead of probing, he ought to grant her the same option of not telling him until she was ready.

  Once inside, since neither of them was hungry, Laura proposed making popcorn. After it was done, leaving some in the kitchen for Grandfather and Sage, they took the bowl, along with iced tea, to the front porch.

  “Will we be riding out tomorrow?” she asked, after an interval of comfortable silence.

  He shook his head. “I need to get ahead on my carving. I’ve got a couple pieces already started—a day of work’ll finish them.”

  “I think I’ll take Sage into Reno and do some shopping, then. She’s outgrown most of her summer clothes.”

  “How much will you need?”

  “My treat. I want to do this for her. Please let me.”

  Shane wiped his hands on a paper napkin, finished the last of his tea, stood up and offered her his hand. “Care to take a walk?”

  She put her hand in his, and he pulled her to her feet, not letting go as they strolled along side by side. Her hand felt deceptively fragile in his. He’d learned she wasn’t, but the smallness of her hand compared to his prompted a surge of protectiveness.

  “Nevada nights are fantastic,” she murmured. “So many more stars to be seen.”

  “And the moon.” He nodded toward its rim, just visible as it edged over a hill.

  “You and that moon. I think it gives you ideas.”

  “Don’t blame it on the moon. The ideas are already there, waiting. Have to admit moonlight makes them more urgent, though.”

  Skirting the row of cottonwoods planted near the house, he led her along a path that led toward the vegetable garden, and stopped by the fence.

  Laura drew in a deep breath. “What’s that sweet fragrance?”

  “Honeysuckle. I planted the vine here so it had the fence to climb. Our mother loved the smell of honeysuckle—she grew this in a pot from a shoot someone gave her.”

  “What was she like?”

  “I like to remember her as she was before she married Sage’s father. He killed her spirit. I’ll never forgive him.”

  With an effort, Shane banished the darkness that came over him when he thought of his stepfather. After their mother had died, he was all set to find and kill the bastard. Grandfather had kept him from going after Jennings by forcing him to remember he was the only person Sage had to count on.

  “Thank you,” he told Laura.

  “You’re welcome, but I don’t know what I did to be thanked for.”

  “You married me and kept Sage safe.” He wasn’t going to get into the rest of it. His need for her had escalated from chronic to acute since that night they had camped under the moon. But he wasn’t at all sure she wanted to know that. Or that he wanted to tell her.

  She didn’t reply and was silent so long that he put his knuckles gently under her chin and turned her face up so he could see her expression in the moonlight. Which was a mistake, because then he couldn’t resist kissing her.

  Her immediate response arrowed through him. He deepened the kiss, drawing her into his arms. The honeysuckle scent surrounding them made him think, for a fleeting moment, that his mother would have liked and approved of Laura.

  Then, aroused by the feel of her softness against him, he forgot everything else. She tasted so sweet. And he needed more, needed the two of them naked, flesh to flesh while they made love to each other.

  What he really wanted was for her to share his bed, not only tonight, but every night. When he reached out in the night he wanted Laura, warm and responsive, next to him.

  His lips left hers, traveling up until he could whisper in her ear, “Tell me what you want.”

  “I want you to hold me forever,” she murmured. “Nothing bad can happen when you hold me.”

  He raised his head, reminded of the story at the cookout. “Don’t worry. I won’t let you give me away.”

  A moment later he cursed himself for saying it, because she stiffened in his embrace and pulled free.

  “We shouldn’t be doing this,” she said.

  “Why not? It’s perfectly legal.”

  “That’s not the point and you know it.”

  “Do I?”

  She turned away from him and sat on the bench. “You know why we married.”

  He eased down beside her but didn’t touch her. “What happened while we were camping rendered the agreement you insisted on null and void.”

  “Our marriage still isn’t a permanent arrangement. I won’t be around forever.”

  He took her hand and began playing with her fingers. “Is that any reason we can’t make love while you’re here?”

  “I don’t think it’s wise.”

  “What’s wisdom got to do with it?”

  “Now you’re teasing me instead of being serious.”

  He brought her hand to his mouth and began kissing her fingers and heard her catch her breath. “I very much want to make love to you, and I’d lay odds you want me to.”

  “That’s not the point.”

  He began touching his tongue to the webs between her fingers in lieu of an answer.

  She sighed. “Oh, Shane, you make it so difficult for me to be sensible.”

  “If you were naked in my bed,” he murmured, “I could taste you all over.”

  Listening to his provocative words, Laura felt as though her insides had melted. In his bed. Much as she longed to be there, she was afraid. Once she agreed to that, what else would she be agreeing to as well?

  And then what would happen? Happy ever after? No, not her.

  “I think it’s dangerous to get any more attached to each other than we are already,” she said firmly, withdrawing her hand and rising from the bench.

  He rose, too, putting his hands on her shoulders. “You’re wrong. I don’t know what in the past your fear comes from, but it has nothing to do with you and me. I’ll never hurt you.”

  “It isn’t you!” she cried. “You don’t understand!” Twisting away, she fled from him up the path and into the house and the security of her own bedroom where she cried herself to sleep.

  Chapter Eleven

  Sage, thrilled with the idea of shopping in Reno with Laura, chattered all the way into town. Which suited Laura, since she hadn’t slept well and was feeling unaccountably depressed.

  “Jessica’s gone back to work,” Sage said. “They’re going to send her to London next. Donna thinks that’s way cool.”

  “Don’t you?” Laura asked.

  “Maybe I’ll want to go places like that when I’m as old as Jessica.”

  Laura glanced at Sage. “But not now?”

  Sage shook her head. “Star needs me, and I want to watch him grow up and get old enough so I can ride him. Grandfather said I’ll be able to train him m
yself ’cause he’ll trust me. That’s important with horses—they got to learn to trust you.” Sage paused. “Shane said it’s the same way with people. You got to learn to trust somebody before you can be friends. And she has to trust you, too.”

  “I’d agree with that.”

  “Yeah, but then Grandfather said something I didn’t understand. He wasn’t really talking to me, he was talking to Shane. Anyway, he told Shane ‘friends’ wasn’t enough. And Shane said he knew that. Grandfather started to say something else, but then he looked at me in his get lost kind of way, so I did.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about it.”

  Sage shrugged. “I’m not.”

  But maybe I should, Laura thought, strongly suspecting Grandfather had meant her. Was he up to something? If so, she couldn’t imagine what it would be.

  “Grandfather knows lots of things no one else does,” Sage went on. “That’s ’cause he’s a medicine man. Once in a while he even dreams. You know most dreams don’t mean anything but sometimes one does. He can tell the difference between a true dream and just a plain ordinary one.”

  “I certainly wouldn’t be able to.”

  “Me neither. You know, just before you came I overheard Grandfather tell Shane he’d dreamed about a palomino horse standing on our porch. He thought that might be a true dream only he couldn’t understand it. But after you got here, I began wondering if the dream meant you were coming. I mean we don’t have one single palomino on the res so couldn’t it’ve meant a stranger was going to arrive—a blond one?”

  “I may be blond, but I’m no mystic, Sage. I’d say we should leave the dreams to Grandfather.” Changing the subject, Laura added, “I hope you know a good place to have lunch in Reno because I’m not all that familiar with the city.”

  “You mean I get to pick where we eat? Grandfather never lets me.”

  “Since he’s not with us, the choice is yours.”

  “It’s more fun to be with you.”

  “That’s because we’re both females. Men don’t always understand.”

  “Yeah, but it’s ’cause you’re Laura, too.”

  Laura felt a pang of remorse. Was she letting Sage get too fond of her?