Season of Storm

by Alexandra Sellers

  He turned and was gone. A minute later they saw him through the other window, running lightly down the rock steps. Smith watched without moving until he had disappeared into the trees. She was trembling with a rage so strong that the coffee was making waves in her cup. She stood up.

  "I want a pair of shoes," she declared flatly to Wilfred Tall Tree. His steady gaze disconcerted her, but she forced herself to stare back at him. "If you're going to be tailing me, you might as well start now." She strode across the wide kitchen, not waiting to see if Wilfred Tall Tree followed her.

  Johnny Winterhawk's bedroom was at the top of both house and cliff, on the highest point of the island. From here he looked out over his domain. A broad central panel in each of three walls was cedar; the rest was glass. The bed abutted on one panel; two others appeared to be closets. The south wall had two doors—one she had come in by and the other opened onto a bathroom.

  Like the bridge of a ship, the room offered a view of the entire island, and she gazed around in startled wonder. The small table of land on which this room sat had been partly cleared and offered a small shady area that was more inviting than any place Smith had ever seen. Behind her, the flat roofs of the other rooms fell away like terraces down the cliffside, sinking slowly into the dark embrace of the rainforest. Out the north-facing windows, through the trees, she could see the island stretching into the sea like the prow of a ship, and the nearby green mound that must be Oyster Island. To the east, over a stretch of sea, the always breathtaking view of the mainland mountains. To the west, a crystal sea and the shadowy shapes of other islands.

  With a sense of fighting against hypnosis Smith closed her eyes and turned away from the view. She crossed at random to one of the doors and opened it to the wafting scent of cedar and the sight of an array of masculine clothes. Under Wilfred Tall Tree's apparently fascinated gaze she pulled out a pair of white canvas shoes and slid her bare foot into one. She grimaced. Miles too big. Smith looked helplessly at the other shoes on the floor of the closet. Nothing here would do.

  "Oh, damn!'' she exploded. A feeling of utter helplessness, which she had been holding at bay ever since being awakened by the noises from her father's bedroom, swamped her. Bursting into loud sobs, Smith sank to her knees in the closet doorway and buried her face in her hands.

  Wilfred Tall Tree walked slowly across the room and stopped near her. "She's annoyed," he explained, apparently to the closet door. "The world isn't exactly the way she wants it."

  Ten

  "In Vancouver today, the British Columbia Court of Appeal upheld a provincial Supreme Court decision not to grant a temporary injunction preventing St. John Forest Products from commencing logging operations in the Cat Bite Valley area."

  It was the top story on the one o'clock news, and Smith dropped the soft golden deerskin she was working on with a gasp of indrawn air and turned her eyes to the radio. Across the little cabin she sensed rather than saw Wilfred Tall Tree stiffen into a like attentiveness.

  "Madam Justice Jennifer MacFarlane read the majority decision at noon today to a courtroom packed with members of the Chopa band, who brought the appeal, and representatives of wildlife foundations and other groups who support the band's appeal. Chief Joseph Three Elk spoke to reporters outside the courtroom."

  A startlingly deep and gravelly voice said, "No, we are not surprised. The native peoples of Canada are no longer surprised by the justice of the white man's court. It is not we Indians but white men who are naive about white man's justice. You, for example, are here to report on news. Your unquestioning belief in Canadian justice has blinded you to the fact that this is not news. This is the same old story. It would have been news if the courts had given the Chopa people justice."

  So St. John Forest Products was legally entitled to begin cutting operations in Cat Bite Valley. Johnny Winterhawk was right. Smith was surprised to feel how much anger burned in the pit of her stomach. Chief Joseph Three Elk was right, too: she was naive about her country's dispensation of justice. She had expected the injunction to be granted. She glanced over at Wilfred Tall Tree, who had returned to working the elaborate mask on his worktable.

  "I suppose the chain saws went in at five minutes past noon," she said bitterly, just as if she herself were not a part of St. John Forest Products.

  "Meanwhile—" the announcer's voice called back her attention "—the Cartier Commission on the Chopa land claim opened public hearings today in Vancouver...."

  Smith shook her head in disbelief. "It's like a game!" she said. "They're all pretending." She hadn't wanted to believe it when Johnny had told her. But she had to believe this. "My father is no fool. He'll have had the logging crews standing by since last night. They'd have been radioed to go in as soon as...." She paused, staring at Wilfred Tall Tree, her eyes and mouth opening with sudden comprehension.

  "But my father's in the hospital!" she reminded herself. "They might be afraid to make a decision like that without him. It would have to be Rolly's decision." Rolly was her father's vice president of operations. He had what her father called "a business-school mentality." By that he meant someone without his own high degree of decisive ruthlessness. With sudden certainty Smith knew it would take Rolly at least a day to issue any order to send chain saws into Cat Bite, and then he would congratulate himself on the speed of his response. Or he might even wait to talk to her father, and if Cord St. John was too weak for visitors….

  She had the power to set things right. In her father's absence no one would question her right to give orders. She could see justice done.

  Smith waited till the weather and sports reports were over and music had begun to play again, waited in an agony of tension that she fought to disguise while she threaded the leather lace through the tiny holes in the toe of one half-finished moccasin. Then casually she laid it aside and stood up.

  "I'm hungry," she said to Wilf, who was bent over his worktable with a tin of green paint and a brush in his hands. "Is it time to start lunch?"

  In the end, the prospect of total inactivity had made Smith give in and ask to make a pair of moccasins. She hated being cooped up in the house. She wanted to explore the island, to find a means of escape. For that she would need shoes. And she was too used to hard work to enjoy enforced idleness. She needed work.

  So Wilfred Tall Tree had brought her down to the studio workshop in his cabin, where he spent his time carving and painting ritual masks. The examples of his work that hung on the walls were sometimes disturbing, sometimes beautiful, always impressive. Smith had looked at Wilfred Tall Tree with a new respect.

  Now he raised his head and fixed her with a deep, luminous gaze.

  "Sure," he said. Smith waited no longer, just whirled and went out of the cabin and up the stony path. It was rough and hard, but by going slowly Smith had negotiated it without damage to her feet on the way down. Now she tried to run, but a stubbed toe and a few sharp pebbles slowed her down to a very frustrating pace. But she had a precious couple of minutes' head start.

  There was a radio-telephone in Johnny Winterhawk's study, but the door was locked. Smith thumped experimentally against it with her hip: it would need an axe. One plank in the floor just in front of the door always creaked, and she wondered if it had been put there deliberately. She dashed to the kitchen, keeping an eye out for Wilfred Tall Tree through the windows. From the knife block she extracted the strongest knife and ran like the wind back to the study again. With all her strength Smith jammed the huge knife between door and jamb and tried to force the lock.

  On the third try it gave. The door swung back around to the wall with a crash like doom, and she dropped the knife. Wincing guiltily, she glanced out the window down toward the path to Wilf's cabin. Through the trees below she spied movement.

  Wings on her feet, she clicked the bolt back, pulled the door shut, snatched up the knife from the floor, and tore back to the kitchen with a speed that made her dizzy. When Wilfred Tall Tree came in, Smith was busily washing lettu
ce.

  ***

  If he had slipped up once, Wilf did not intend to slip again. Though he must want to get back to his work, he stuck with her as she sat with a book in the sun, walked through the house examining the art, listened to the radio. But her inactivity bored her more than it did Wilf, and at last she asked to go back down to his cabin to finish her moccasins.

  Now she worked harder and faster than she had before. Having something on her feet would give her far greater mobility if Wilfred Tall Tree were ever to let her out of his sight again.

  Shortly after five o'clock she looked at the pair of golden deerskin moccasins with more pride in her handiwork than she would have imagined. As a child she had always enjoyed handicrafts. At summer camp each year her work had taken prizes. She had dutifully written to her father about them, and he had usually praised her, but he never came to see for himself on parents' day. He was always too busy.

  "Finished!" she announced matter-of-factly to Wilfred Tall Tree, hiding the odd little burst of pride she felt at having made something as pretty as the delicate moccasins she was holding up for his approval.

  He smiled at her, his dark eyes liquid, and nodded his head. "Very good," he said softly. "You work well with your hands."

  It was as though he had recognized that small pride she hid, and Smith looked away. "I hope they fit!" she muttered self-deprecatingly, and bent to slip them on. She lifted one moccasin-clad foot with a casual air. "Perfect!" she said to Wilf with a smile. "And just in time to go and make dinner. Don't hurry, I'll do it!"

  A few minutes later she was at the house, breathless and panting, having run all the way this time. Almost sobbing with exertion, she ran up through the house to Johnny Winterhawk's study, slammed the door behind her and ran to pick up the radio-telephone.

  It took an age to raise the operator, but at last her number was ringing. Smith glanced at her wrist out of habit: her watch was on her dressing table at home. She bounced impatiently. Was Rolly still at the office? Surely he must be, today of all days? He must be wondering what to do?

  At last the switchboard operator at St. John Forest Products connected her to Rolly's office. His voice answered the phone and she closed her eyes in relief.

  "Rolly!" she said in a high urgent tone that wasn't at all like her normal voice. "Rolly, is that you? It's—"

  And then, as though she were in a recurring nightmare, she saw a strong bronzed hand reach from behind her and cut the connection.

  Smith gasped and whirled to face a hard angry stare from Johnny Winterhawk. Without a word, he took the receiver from her hand and replaced it on the hook, his powerful body uncomfortably and threateningly near. Then he grasped her arm above the elbow.

  "Come on," he said shortly. "You're going home."

  Never in her life had she sensed such tightly controlled haste in another person. Johnny Winterhawk strode beside her down through the house, down the rock staircase and the path, his hand on her wrist, restricting his pace to hers. But there was a boiling urgency just under the surface, an awful tension that made her feel like a walking wounded being led away from disaster by a healthy person.

  He wanted to run. He wanted to be exerting the utmost effort, as though in the face of terrible danger. His urgency filled Smith, and turned to fear and then to nameless dread inside her.

  She broke into a half run, and beside her, without comment, Johnny Winterhawk lengthened his stride to match.

  "What is it?" she asked breathlessly. "Johnny, what's wrong?" The feeling of being united in danger let her use his name for the first time without either of them noticing.

  "Not now," he returned briefly.

  They were both running by the time they reached the dock, where the sleek black speedboat, engines idling, was tied to the dock only by the painter.

  "Get aboard!" Johnny shouted, running to untie the rope, and Smith leaned out to grasp the stanchion, pulled the boat closer to the dock and jumped aboard.

  Johnny Winterhawk followed her immediately and went to the wheel. He reversed till they cleared the dock, then rammed the engines into forward and swung the big boat around to the east.

  Smith sank onto a seat and looked at him, her heart beating more with terror than exertion.

  "It's my father, isn't it? My father is dying."

  "No," he said.

  "Or dead," she prompted, feeling the tears press up in her throat and the back of her eyes.

  "No," he repeated shortly, then turned his dark gaze onto her stricken face. "As far as I know," he added, "your father is fine."

  "Then why are you taking me home? What's changed?" she asked, not sure whether to believe him or not.

  Johnny looked at her with a speculative look, then looked to the dark water ahead. He bent to peer at the speedometer, then pushed the throttle, wanting more speed, but it was already as far forward as it could go.

  Fear crept from its hiding place in her mind and settled in her stomach, a horrid dead weight that made her ill.

  "You...you are taking me home, aren't you?" she stammered. The water here in Georgia Strait was cold and deep. She looked down at the golden deerskin moccasin on one foot, soft and bright in its newness, and pictured it washed up on a pebbly beach somewhere, sodden and grey.

  If she had read about it in the safety of her bed at night it would have been hard for her to believe that someone like Johnny Winterhawk would kill anyone, especially someone he had talked to and laughed with...and kissed passionately the day before. He seemed so sane and warm and real, and in spite of what was happening she instinctively trusted him. If she had been reading all this, she would not have believed that trust could so easily turn to gnawing fear and mistrust.

  But what did she really know about him? Nothing. Nothing...except that her presence was a threat to him. Except that she would have virtually the power of life and death over him if he set her free. The sentence for kidnapping would be a long one. And she could imagine that for a man like Johnny Winterhawk—for anyone—life behind those cold concrete walls would be death in life. Worse, much worse. Her imagination could not compass it.

  The unconscious realization that she herself would do nearly anything rather than go to a life like that was the root now of her fear of Johnny Winterhawk.

  "Yes, I'm taking you home," he said, and his jaw tightened. "I've done some stupid things in my time, but nothing I've done compares with the monumentally self-destructive idiocy of kidnapping you in the first place." He looked at her. "Well, I'll have a long time to think about it, no doubt."

  Smith swallowed against the hope that was flowering up inside her. "I promise I won't say anything," she said, standing up and crossing to where he stood at the wheel. She laid a tentative hand on his arm. "Truly, I promise," she repeated. "You haven't hurt me, Johnny. I—I couldn't send you to prison."

  His glance found hers and locked with it. He bent and brushed her lips lightly with his own, and a soft, melting warmth flowed through her.

  "Thank you," he said. "Your father is a strong, ruthless man even in a hospital bed, and he might inspire the police to be very tough with you. If you do decide to press charges against me, Peaceable Woman, I'll deny everything." His dark eyes gazed into hers. "I'll be calling you a liar. There'll be no evidence to corroborate your testimony. I'll do my best to make you look like a woman with rape fantasies." He smiled apologetically at her. She knew he was warning her, trying to prepare her for the ugliness that he foresaw. Smith blinked against the unexpected tears that burned her eyelids. His gaze was full of concern for her, and it had caught her off guard. She swallowed and stared helplessly into the depths of those eyes.

  Without warning the odd, compelling force was between them again, making her feel that her whole being burned into his through her eyes. Johnny Winterhawk muttered a curse and turned away as, with a barely perceptible unsteadiness, his hand moved out to the switch of the portable radio behind him. The voice of the news announcer filled the air of the cockpit.

&
nbsp; "... police, who were at his hospital bedside when the call came. Shulamith St. John has been missing since early yesterday morning. Police refused to comment on whether the ransom demand would be met."

  Smith stood at shocked attention, gazing at the radio. "Ransom demand!" she repeated. "Who...but...."

  "Find another station!" Johnny Winterhawk commanded, and with fumbling obedience her fingers spun the dial to CBC.

  The national newscast, unlike the local one, had led with a political story, which was just finishing. Then, "In Vancouver this evening, a startling development has apparently confirmed that Shulamith St. John, the lumber heiress missing since the early hours of Sunday morning, has been kidnapped. The kidnapping now appears to be linked to the battle being waged by the Chopa Indian band against Cordwainer St. John, her lumber-baron father. Mr. St. John, who suffered a heart attack early Sunday morning and thereafter reported his daughter missing, received a phone call at his bed in the Royal Georgia Hospital today, demanding that he call off planned lumbering operations in Cat Bite Valley as the price of his daughter's safe return.

  "The Chopa band's court appeal for a temporary injunction against lumbering in the area, their traditional hunting and fishing grounds and the subject of an inquiry by the federal government, was turned down by the British Columbia Court of Appeal earlier today. Coincidentally, two officers of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police were at St. John's bedside when the kidnapper's call came through. Mr. St. John was unavailable for comment."

  Johnny Winterhawk cursed softly and steadily, his low voice pulled tight against violent anger. Smith stared at him. "How—" she began, but he cut her off.

  "Too late," he said, and swore again.

  Smith sat motionless, gazing at him. Ahead in the distance the skyline of Vancouver was silhouetted against Grouse Mountain. As she watched, Johnny Winterhawk turned to the wheel, and the city slipped slowly around the starboard bow, and then to the stern. Vancouver was behind them in a moment, and with the late-afternoon sun in her eyes, Smith knew they were facing back in the direction of the island.