“You’re almost too tired to eat, aren’t you, Brother?” Bonnie soothed the hair at the nape of his neck.
“Almost, but not quite. I’m hungry as a bear.”
“Gustaf was hungry as a wolf,” Kristin said. “He would have eaten all the bread pudding if we hadn’t held some back for you and Buck.”
“Buck didn’t think he’d be back until after midnight.”
“That late?” Kristin set the hot coffeepot back down on the stove. “Heaven’s sake. Where did he go?”
“Up north someplace. He said he’d give the signal when he rode in so we’d not shoot him.”
“Let me take your watch, Brother. You need some rest.”
Bernie’s head came up and he glared at his sister.
“Don’t ever suggest that, Bonnie! I’m warning you. I’ll be madder than hell if you do. I can carry my own weight. I may not be able to run as fast, but I can do anything else a man here can do.”
“I know that . . . but just a few days ago you could hardly climb out of the buggy. I worry—”
“Don’t. Gustaf will take the first watch. He’ll wake me when it’s my turn.”
The evening dragged on. After Buck’s supper was in the warming oven and the kitchen was put to order, Kristin sat in one of the big chairs and knitted on the muffler she was making. After an hour she put it down.
“I think I’ll make my nightly trip to the outhouse, then go to bed.”
“I’ll go with you.”
Kristin threw her shawl around her shoulders and lit the lantern while Bonnie went to their room for her coat. They walked out into the cool autumn night.
“This place must be higher than Big Timber. I didn’t notice it being so cool nights.”
“It’s that time of year. The stars seem brighter tonight.”
“That’s because there’s no moon. I love to look at the sky at night.” The woman walked down the path to the outhouse. “This is a nice place,” Bonnie said. “Some outhouses in town aren’t this nice.”
On the way back to the house, Gustaf’s voice came out of the darkness.
“I could sure use more a that puddin’.”
The women stopped, looked at each other and laughed.
“Gustaf, where are you?”
“Blow out the lantern, Kris. You can see that light a mile away.”
Kristin blew out the lantern. “Where are you?”
“On top of the barn.”
“You’re no such thing. Stop teasing.”
“I know where he is.” Bonnie took Kristin’s hand and they walked toward the woodpile. They found him sitting on a log, a rifle beside him.
“How did you know I was here?”
“If you’re goin’ to do any sneakin’ around, you’d better cover that light hair with a cap.”
“Stay and keep me company.”
“Do that, Bonnie. I’m going to bed.”
“How about it, bonny-Bonnie, brown eyes?” Gustaf tugged on her skirt.
“Just for a while. But if you get smart-mouthed—”
“I’ll not get smart-mouthed, but I might get fresh.”
“Just try it. I know how to handle mashers.”
“I think you’ve met your match, Cousin Gus,” Kristin said. “I’ll leave the lantern on the nail on the porch.”
When they were alone, Bonnie became almost tongue-tied. She sat on the log leaving a foot of space between her and Gustaf. Even Gustaf’s wit seemed to have dried up.
“Your cousin’s feelin’ down in the mouth.” Bonnie finally thought of something to say.
“It’s Buck. She’s in love with him and he’s too dumb to know it.”
“He likes her, too. I’ve seen him watchin’ her when she wasn’t lookin’. Do you approve?”
“Hell, I don’t know. Kris has never been courted that I know of. She doesn’t know much about . . . that sort of thing.”
“But you do. I suppose you’re a regular textbook on courtin’.”
“I’ve done a little . . . now and then. Here and there.”
“Probably more than a little.”
“Well . . . what can a feller do when so many girls follow him that he has to carry a club to hold them off?”
Bonnie began to laugh. “I’ll swear. You act like you’re the only rooster in the henhouse.”
“And you’re a pretty little brown hen. Would Bernie let me court you?”
“You’ll have to ask . . . him.” Suddenly Bonnie couldn’t draw enough air into her lungs.
“What about that feller in town that’s got his sights set on you?”
“Did Bernie tell you about him?”
“Said he was crazy about you.”
“I don’t understand why—”
“ ‘It lies not in our power to love or hate. For will in us is overruled by fate.’ Those lines are from a poem by Christopher Marlowe.”
“Who’s he?”
“An Englishman who died a couple hundred years ago. Kris gave me a book of his poems, and I’ve read them all a hundred times.”
“I don’t know much about poems—”
“I didn’t either until I started reading his. This is the one I like best.
Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That hills and valleys, dales and fields,
Woods, or steepy mountain yields.
“Do you like it?”
“It’s . . . pretty. But I don’t understand it.”
“You have to think about it for a while. But enough of that. Tell me about this man who’s so crazy about you. Does he force his attentions on you?”
“He’s never been disrespectful. I’m not afraid of him for me or for Bernie, but I don’t know about anyone else—” Her voice trailed. “He’s dangerous. Very dangerous.”
“Tell me about him,” Gustaf insisted. He moved and narrowed the space between them.
Bonnie told about meeting Del Gomer when she and her brother first came to Big Timber. She confessed that she liked him a lot at first. When she found out he was a killer for hire, she felt a fool for liking him and told him she wanted nothing more to do with him. He took the rejection calmly and still came to the restaurant.
“I think I feel sorry for him.” Bonnie’s voice was hardly above a whisper. Her face was turned toward him but it was all darkness and he could see nothing of her expression. “There is a total lack of feelin’ in him for everythin’ but—”
“—Everything but you.”
“Yes. And I don’t understand it,” she said again.
A low growl came from Sam, and Gustaf jumped up. The dog lay a short distance away. He lifted his head, looked toward the grove west of the house, growled again, then lay back down.
“What is it?” Bonnie whispered.
“Maybe a fox thinkin’ to get in the chicken coop.” Gustaf sat back down, but watched the dog. He appeared to be going back to sleep.
Time passed quickly. The wind stirred, a faint breeze. The night was wide and still. The stars hung like lanterns in the sky. A quail sent out a questioning call. Again, Gustaf cocked his head to listen. It was not the signal. He looked down at the warm hand clasped in his and wondered how long it had been there.
Chapter Twenty-one
When Kristin entered the house, she struck a match, lit a candle and blew out the lamp. She had tried to use Buck’s lamp oil sparingly and chided herself for leaving the lamp burning while she and Bonnie went to the outhouse.
The house was lonely and quiet. She left the candle on the table and went into Buck’s room. He had slept there the first few nights after she came here, then moved out to the bunkhouse when she insisted on taking over the care of Moss at night in order to give him some rest. His clothes hung on the pegs and his extra pair of boots sat on the floor beneath them.
She ran her hand over the foot of the iron bedstead. Bonnie probably wondered why she was sharing Kristin’s bed when this bed was unoccupied. This was Buck�
�s bed. The sheets had been washed and sun-dried, the feather pillow fluffed. It was ready for him when he came back to take possession of his home.
Kristin felt a desperate loneliness. How could she love a man who had so little feeling for her? Was she doomed to go through life without the loving husband and family she’d dreamed of having?
On the way to the door, Kristin touched the clean, mended shirts she had hung on the pegs. If there had been a bureau, she would have folded them and put them in one of the drawers. His heavy sheepskin-lined coat hung on the wall. She rested her face against it for a moment. It smelled faintly of woodsmoke.
She sighed heavily as she lifted the bar on the door, opened it, and went out onto the porch.
A cool breeze was blowing down from the mountains. Kristin hugged her shawl closely about her and looked up at the blanket of stars. She wondered if Buck, wherever he was, was looking at the same stars. He would be hungry when he got home. He was a big man—
The hand that came out of the darkness cut off her thoughts and the air going to her lungs. She was jerked off the porch. The arm about her waist was like an iron band. The hand over her mouth tightened, a thumb and forefinger squeezed her nostrils.
Fighting for breath, feeling her heart was about to burst, Kristin struggled, flailing with her feet, aware she had been lifted off the ground and that her arms were pinned to her sides. Her last conscious thought as she plunged toward an enormous black pit was: Buck . . . I love you.
With Kristin over his shoulder, Runs Fast ran swiftly through the woods. He was more convinced than ever that it was his destiny to have this woman. The Great One had cleared the way for him to take her. He had not had to send an arrow into the heart of the Wasicun beside the woodpile. He had not needed to go into the house or to kill the Wasicun woman who slept in the house with his talisman. White Flower had opened the door and come to him.
When she stirred, the Indian stopped, laid her on the grass and waited for her to take great gulps of air into her lungs. Then before she was fully conscious, he put his hand over her mouth and pinched her nostrils until she was quiet again. He picked her up and continued his journey to where his horse waited. By sunup they would be far away and by midday at the place where his other wives waited with the skins for his lodge, his horses, and warriors who admired and followed him.
Runs Fast felt good. It was over. Now he felt purified in mind as well as in body. The Great One would be pleased with him this night.
He had taken Lenning’s woman.
* * *
Bonnie was sure that she had never been happier in her entire life. Sitting in the dark, she and Gustaf seemed to be enclosed in a small world all their own. They talked of many things. At times they teased; at other times they spoke of serious thoughts and dreams.
Gustaf confessed that, even though he had not expected to, he liked this wild country. This was a place where a man was judged by his deeds and not by his assets. He was seriously thinking of spending his life here. Of course, he had no intention of staying here on the Larkspur unless Kristin needed him to help her get started. Then he would strike out on his own.
“Bernie would like to work on engines,” Bonnie confided, knowing her brother would not care. “He thinks engines will be on most carriages in a few years, and they’ll even be pulling water up out of a well and plowin’ fields. ’Course he couldn’t make a livin’ doin’ that yet. There aren’t enough of them. We’d still have an eatery and make our living that way.”
Time passed so quickly that Gustaf almost forgot to pull the heavy silver watch from his pocket and light a match to see what time it was.
“An hour after midnight. I can’t believe we’ve been sitting out for almost four hours.” Bonnie stood. “Bernie will be put out if you don’t wake him for his shift. He’s so afraid of not doing his share.”
“He don’t need to worry about that. Your brother is more of a man than many I’ve met who have two good legs but not much between the ears.”
“He’s got more than his share of pride . . . and temper, too,” she added with a nervous little laugh. “I was glad to get him out of Big Timber. At times I was so worried—”
Gustaf threw his arm across her shoulders much in the way he did when with Kristin.
“You don’t have to worry by yourself now. You and Bernie have friendships. Friendships multiply joys and divide grief,” he quoted.
“Did that Marlowe fellow write that, too?”
“No. A fellow named Bohn said it.”
“Have you been to a university?”
“Good Lord, no! I’ve been on the river since I was fifteen years old. When I wasn’t there, I was working on my brother’s farm. My mother and sister are there. I go back every once in a while to help out. It’s my way of paying my share of their keep.”
Bonnie had walked with him to the door of the bunkhouse. He stuck his head in and called softly to Bernie, who replied immediately.
“Be there soon as I get my peg on. Damn,” Bernie swore as he dropped the peg on the floor.
“Ya ain’t needin’ to be so quiet,” Tandy’s voice came out of the darkness. “I ain’t asleep. All I done been doin’ is layin’ here on my backside and sleepin’. Damn girl won’t let me up,” he grumbled.
Gustaf was walkin’ the damn girl to the house.
“Will Bernie be sore’ cause you stayed out here with me?”
“I don’t know why he should be. We give each other credit for good sense. Besides, he likes you.”
“Thanks for the company. It made the time go fast. I would’ve stayed out there all night as long as you stayed with me.”
Bonnie felt her heart jump out of rhythm. She tried to cover this feeling of elation with sassiness.
“That’s fine for you, but what about me? I’d have been dead on my feet tomorrow and still would have had to help cook and wash your dirty clothes.”
“I might be able to find some socks for you to darn.”
“Oh, you—”
Bonnie opened the door. A draft coming through the house almost sucked the flame from the candle on the table. It flickered and hissed as it swayed into the melted wax. Bonnie closed the door.
“She left a candle burning,” she whispered. “It’s burned down to almost nothing.”
“There’s a door or window open.” Gustaf was suddenly uneasy. “Light the lamp.”
When a flame was safely behind the glass chimney, Gustaf put out the candle and a spiral of smoke lifted toward the ceiling. With a worried frown, he went to the front of the house, where the door stood wide-open. He looked out at the starry sky, then closed it.
“Bonnie! The door was open. Don’t they usually keep it barred? See about Kristin!” He hurried back to the kitchen as she came out the door of the small room.
“She’s not here!” She went to the mantel and carried the lamp back to Kristin’s room. “She . . . she hasn’t been to bed. It’s still made up and her nightdress is there—folded on top of her trunk.”
“Oh, my God! Where can she be? Maybe she went out the front door to the outhouse.” Gustaf ran to the back door and leaped off the porch. “Kris!” he called as he ran.
Bonnie hurried after him and took the lantern from the nail beside the door, brought it to the kitchen and lit it. She went out onto the porch and shouted: “Kristin!” Seconds later she moved out into the yard to meet Gustaf when she saw him running up the path.
“She’s not there! Kris!” he shouted, then again, “Kris!”
“What the hell is going on?” Bernie came out of the bunkhouse carrying a rifle and pulling on a coat.
“Kristin’s gone. We can’t . . . find her.” Bonnie was near tears.
Gustaf took the lantern from Bonnie’s hand and went to the barn. They could hear him shouting for his cousin as he passed through and circled the bunkhouse. Bonnie explained to her brother what had happened.
“They must have taken her. They came in right under our noses.”
; “Didn’t you hear anythin’ at all?”
“The old dog raised up once and growled, then lay back down. If he’d a smelled or heard anythin’ strange, he’d of raised a ruckus, you know that.”
Bernie put his arm around his sister while they waited for Gustaf. He came around the side of the pole corral, the light from the lantern bobbing as he trotted toward them.
“Nothin’. She ain’t here! Oh, my God! If they hurt her, I’ll kill ever’ damn one of them!”
“If they hurt her, Buck will beat you to it.” Bernie headed for the bunkhouse. “I’ll tell Tandy. He got all excited when he heard you yell.”
“Gol-durn right I got excited. I might be old, but I ain’t dead.” Tandy had pulled on his britches and boots and with a blanket wrapped about his shoulders met Bernie at the door.
“You shouldn’t be up, Tandy,” Bonnie scolded, as the old man sank down on the bench beside the door.
“What should we do?” Gustaf was almost in a state of shock.
“Buck will be back soon. It’s past midnight.”
“—But what if he doesn’t come back till mornin’?”
“Call in them Indians and Gilly, is what ya ort to do,” Tandy said.
“How’ll I do that?”
“Fire three fast shots. Gilly will hear, so will Buck if he’s in five miles a here.”
“I’m not sure it’s a good idea,” Bernie said. “Maybe the only ones that’ll hear it will be the one’s who took Kristin.”
“What’er ya carin’ if they hear?” Tandy said crossly. “Gilly will hear. The sound’ll bounce off them mountains and travel down the valley. Fire the shots.”
Bernie took the handgun from his holster, pointed it upward and fired three shots in rapid succession.
* * *
Buck was bone-tired. He slumped in the saddle and let the big gray horse choose his own pace. He could have sent one of the drovers to see about the cattle in the secluded canyon near Wheeler Creek, but it gave him a reason to spend the day away from the house. He needed to think.
The trail he followed crossed a clearing and when he looked up at the sky, he saw that a cloud bank had appeared in the southwest with a promise of rain before morning. The box canyon where he had driven a small herd was in need of a good rain.
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