Paco asked the question, his voice sharp; making Ginny look quickly across the small distance that separated her from the group around the fire. Sure enough, the brown neckerchief he’d worn when he’d left camp was wrapped around his arm, still caked with dried blood.
“Knife,” Steve Morgan said shortly.
“Here, you’d better let me have a look at it, companero,” Paco advised. “I know we got some medical supplies stashed away somewhere.”
There was a sudden spate of talk, with Steve protesting he’d put some herbs on his arm and it didn’t need anything else, Paco insisting the wound should be cleaned, and Pop Wilkins yelling for one of the men to fetch him the medical kit.
“You’ll probably end up with blood-poisoning—I don’t suppose Indian knives are the cleanest in the world,” Carl Hoskins said, swinging almost viciously on his heel as he walked away.
“We have emergency medical supplies in our own wagon. And since all you gentlemen seem so undecided and disorganized, perhaps you’ll allow me to attend to Mr. Morgan’s wound.”
Without being told, Tillie had already brought the small box of supplies that the Senator had thoughtfully provided, and Ginny found herself walking coolly towards the fire. She saw the look of surprise replaced by something else—something unreadable and almost challenging in Steve Morgan’s eyes as he came quickly and easily to his feet.
“It’s only a scratch, ma’am. And I’m afraid I’m not exactly sanitary—didn’t have time to take a bath—”
Did his voice hold the slightest trace of mockery? If it did she ignored it, just as she ignored the looks she received from the others. Sonya’s pale face showed amazement, and something like dismay, Pop Wilkins looked dumbfounded, and the glance that Paco Davis gave her was enigmatic.
“Mr. Morgan, none of us here is exactly clean after all that dust we’ve been riding through. If you’ll come with me please, I’m sure we ought to fix that arm up right away.”
The small medicine chest had everything in it that might be needed. Salves and bandages and raw spirits—even curved needles and catgut; and laudanum for pain. Everything the doctor in San Antonio had been able to think of.
Since Ginny had already turned to lead the way to her wagon, Steve followed her, shrugging.
When she gestured shortly he merely raised an eyebrow and sat obediently on the bare ground by the wagon, leaning his back up against the wheel. Without words, Paco handed him his shirt, helping him get one arm into the sleeve of the wrinkled buckskin garment.
“If you’ll excuse me for just a minute, Miss Brandon,” he said politely, taking the bottle Paco held in his other hand.
“Mr. Morgan!”
“Just a little whiskey, ma’am—to take the sting away.”
His eyes smiled impudently up at her, and her lips tightened.
“Ginny,” Sonya whispered from somewhere behind her, “are you sure that—I mean, have you ever tended a wound before? Sometimes it takes a strong stomach—”
“I can manage!” Ginny said tartly.
She took the small, sharp pair of scissors from its tray, and kneeling beside him, began to cut away the blood soaked neckerchief. In spite of her care, bits of it adhered to the skin, and Ginny bit her lip.
“Needs to be washed off, ma’am,” Paco offered, kneeling beside her. He grinned maliciously at Steve. “We’re runnin’ kind of low on water—try the rotgut. It’ll sting some, but it’s good for healing.”
“Well—whatever you two decide, gimme another drink first!”
Steve scowled at Paco, then tilted his head back, letting the fiery liquor wash down his throat until Paco snatched the bottle away.
“You aren’t serious?” Ginny stared at him questioningly, but Paco, after shaking the bottle, was already trickling whiskey over the bloody, open wound on his friend’s arm.
Steve gritted his teeth against the searing, burning pain, but apart from a hissing intake of breath he made no sound, sitting there as stoic as an Indian while Ginny, face pale, used her tweezers to pick pieces of silk from the wound.
She had to wash the wound out again with spirits afterwards, wincing as she did so, and this time he went white under his tan.
“Jesus!” he gritted. “It didn’t hurt this much getting that cut!”
“That’ll be enough swearing, Mr. Morgan, if you please,” Ginny said stiffly, although she was more than a little shaken herself. Surprising her, he apologized, turning his head to examine his arm as if it did not belong to him.
Drying the crimson, still-oozing knife cut with a piece of gauze, Ginny began carefully to apply some of the salve the doctor had recommended particularly for cuts, with Steve Morgan watching dubiously.
Ridiculous, she thought angrily to herself, that she should choose this moment to notice how long and thick his eyelashes were. Who cared what kind of eyelashes a man possessed?
Her fingers faltered, and suddenly his eyes were looking right into hers, their strange blueness reflecting the leaping firelight.
“Hold still—it’s difficult to see now that it’s so dark,” she said unnecessarily. But why had she said that? And why did they suddenly seem to be alone?
She saw his lips curl in a slightly mocking smile and said quickly, surprising herself, “Why did you live with the Indians? Long ago, I mean. Were you kidnapped?”
“I was fifteen, ma’am—a mite old for them to want to kidnap!”
“You haven’t answered my question. Is it because you don’t want to?”
The smile left his face, and he seemed to look at her strangely.
“I lived with the Comanche because I chose to. But it’s a long story, ma’am, and you’d get bored.”
Exasperated, Ginny glared at him.
“Why couldn’t you be honest enough to tell me you didn’t want to talk about it? And by the way—I ought to remind you that you forget far too often to use bad grammar for your rough frontier scout act to be very convincing!”
He burst out laughing until she yanked on the ends of the bandage she had begun to wrap around his arm; and then he said “ouch!” and looked at her reproachfully.
“You’re—”
A shadow fell across her shoulder, and Ginny looked up startled to see Carl Hoskins standing there with an ugly look on his face.
“Looks like our gunfighter went out to play Injun and got his gun hand crippled, doesn’t it?”
Afterwards, Ginny could not remember seeing any movement, but Steve Morgan’s gun, drawn from his left holster, suddenly lay against his thigh, pointing casually at Hoskins.
“Ain’t nothing wrong with my other arm though—in case it worried you, Hoskins,” he drawled. Ginny saw Carl’s face go pale, and then, shrugging, Steve holstered the gun.
“Couldn’t resist the chance to show off, could you?” Carl said bitterly. He glanced once at Ginny, and then, as if he controlled himself with an effort, turned and walked away towards the fire.
Ginny saw Sonya follow him quickly, putting her hand on his arm as she talked to him softly and urgently.
“What on earth is the matter with Carl?”
Morgan, his face unreadable again, had begun to slide his bandaged arm into the sleeve of his shirt.
“Could be he’s jealous,” he said shortly.
In some inexplicable way his curt observation annoyed Ginny all over again.
“That’s ridiculous!” she said quickly. “I don’t belong to Carl Hoskins, and besides, there’s nothing to be jealous of.”
“No?”
Her eyes widened slightly, and unconsciously, her tongue moistened her lips.
Streaks of bright paint stood out on his brown body, thrown into relief by the dancing firelight, and none of the angry, sarcastic words she wanted to use on him would emerge from her suddenly-dry throat.
“I don’t understand,” she said at last, the words sounding soft and hesitant.
“I think you do,” he said abruptly, and the look in his eyes went through her like a
jolt, making her heart pound dizzily.
Ginny was hardly aware that somehow, she was on her feet, his hands holding hers. He was thanking her, his voice polite and suddenly rather remote. Was he going to leave her? And why should the thought that any minute now he would turn around and walk away from her upset her so?
He had dropped her hands, and was frowning at her. She should say something, do something, but what? What is wrong with me, her mind cried out, and she felt mesmerized by his closeness, by the strange man-smell of him, the lean face with the whisker-stubble filling out all the hollows. She knew him and she didn’t know him—and at this moment she neither knew nor understood herself. She had the almost irresistible impulse to sway against him, to feel his arms around her, touch the long, curling hair at the back of his neck.
“Better go back to your wagon, Miss Brandon,” he said suddenly, harshly, breaking the spell that seemed to have seized them both for an instant. “Because if you don’t I’m liable to grab a hold of you and kiss you—and they’re all watching. Better go—before it’s too late.”
“Are you afraid of something Mr. Morgan? You?”
From a distance, Ginny heard her own voice, mocking, lightly teasing, and she knew instinctively that she’d said the right thing, for his eyes began to crinkle with appreciative laughter.
“And I was beginning to wonder if you’d lost your claws!”
“I sheathe them sometimes.”
Deliberately, she let her eyes sparkle provocatively at him, and he laughed out loud.
From his place by the fire, Carl Hoskins glared angrily at them, his handsome face twisted with hate.
“Hadn’t you ought to do something about that, Mrs. Brandon? Look at them—laughing together, flirting like none of us were here! I ought to—”
“You’ll do nothing, Carl Hoskins,” Sonya said sharply, although her face too looked troubled. “Please,” she added more softly, “we mustn’t have any trouble, not now! And you mustn’t worry, Ginny’s a sensible girl, she’s only being friendly.”
“It’s him I don’t trust! Morgan—a half-breed killer like him, he should keep his distance. His kind doesn’t know how to act around decent women, doesn’t she know how dangerous he is?”
“I’ve told you, there’s nothing to worry about! Why, Ginny doesn’t even like him, she’s told me so.”
“That’s not the way it looks right now, though. Look at her, what’s gotten into her?”
Dismayed, Sonya followed Carl’s eyes and saw Ginny reach her hand up, running her fingers lightly over the paint streaks on Steve Morgan’s bare chest.
“And what does that look like?”
Carl Hoskins’ voice sounded muffled with rage and frustration, and Sonya herself could not repress a gasp of exasperation. Carl was right, what on earth was Ginny thinking of?
It was with a feeling of relief that Sonya saw Steve hold Ginny’s wrist firmly, moving it away; saw his dark head bend towards her as he said something. Ginny was shrugging, but whatever it was he had said to her had some effect, for a few seconds later he walked away with a rather ironical bow, and Ginny, lifting her skirts without a backward glance, disappeared into the shadowy interior of the wagon.
13
Sonya had meant to talk seriously with Ginny, but with a cunning she would not have believed the girl capable of, her stepdaughter managed adroitly to avoid it.
Ginny was asleep, or pretending to be, when Sonya entered the wagon, after spending a good half hour pacifying Carl Hoskins, and Sonya, who was rather tired and depressed herself was almost glad to postpone their talk. The next morning, when they broke camp at about five o’clock, Ginny took the reins, advising Sonya cheerfully to get some more sleep while she had the chance.
But when Sonya woke up later on in the morning, still feeling unaccountably weary, only Tillie sat on the high seat, clucking at the mules. Ginny was gone.
Questioned, Tillie said rather sullenly that Miss Ginny had gone riding—she had said she wanted to see the cattle and the wagons travel through the pass.
“But—she surely didn’t go by herself? Good heavens, there may still be Indians around!”
“No, ma’am, she didn’t go by herself. Mr. Morgan, he came by, and she went along with him. Said they was going to ride up into the mountains a ways, an’ catch up with us later.”
“Oh, no!” Sonya’s china blue eyes mirrored not only dismay but a kind of anger as well.
She bit her lip to keep back the words she wanted to blurt out—it would never do to let Tillie know how she really felt! But she was uncomfortably aware, as she climbed up beside Tillie, that the brown eyes studied her slyly. It didn’t matter, of course, what Tillie thought, but it really was thoughtless and quite out of character for Ginny to act so—so sneakily!
Her own venom surprising her, Sonya thought viciously, “damn Steve Morgan!” Why did it have to be he William hired? And after all these years? And what was he doing with Ginny?
Steve Morgan was wondering the same thing, when they stopped for the second time to rest and water their horses on the long, steep slope that led down from the hills.
Why had he been crazy enough last night to promise he’d bring her up here? No one knew better than he that there might still be a few stray Apaches around, and with a woman along, especially one as inexperienced as Ginny Brandon—he told himself grimly that it must have been that rotgut Paco called whiskey. But then, what had gotten into her?
The waterhole was really no more than a seep—a small underground spring he’d found under a huge, overhanging boulder. In spite of the fact that she’d sensed he was in a hurry to move on, Ginny had dismounted, and seated herself deliberately with her back against a smaller boulder, pretending that the long ride had tired her. She had pulled the hat from her head and was fanning herself with it, eyes closed; but she was well aware, all the same, that her companion was studying her, his face morose and unsmiling. She had asked herself all morning why she had come with him, and now, why she was here, but womanlike, she did not want to find the answer. She wanted—she didn’t know what she wanted! She was here—let him make the first move.
So far, he had been polite—answering when she spoke to him, occasionally advising her to be careful when the trail they had followed grew narrow. Unlike Carl, he made no attempts to press his leg against hers when they happened to ride side by side. She had flirted with him last night, and he had responded, but this morning everything seemed changed. What was he thinking?
“We’d better get started. It’s going to take all of two hours to catch up with the wagons as it is.”
His voice came from somewhere above her, and Ginny pretended he had startled her.
“Oh! Is it really such a distance down this side of the mountain? It seemed to take much less time when we were climbing!”
An unwilling smile twitched the corner of his mouth.
“If you’ll recall, ma’am, I think I told you that this trail we’re following now kind of skirts around the hills. Takes longer that way.”
He reached his hand out to her and she took it unwillingly, scrambling to her feet when he tugged.
“Ma’am! Why do you keep calling me that? You make me sound like an old married woman.”
“Well, what would you rather I called you, Miss Brandon?” he said dryly, and something about the way his eyes looked her over, coolly and appraisingly, made her flush with embarrassment.
“You really are a very exasperating man!”
Ginny pulled her hand from his and walked over to her mare, turning her back on him.
“Ginny Brandon.” His voice held an undertone of laughter now, as she felt him come up behind her. His hands touched her shoulders, turning her around gently to face him. “Why am I so very exasperating? What did you expect from me?”
She had to force herself to meet his eyes.
“I don’t know. Honesty, perhaps. Most men are not honest with women, you know. They pretend and play-act and force us too into
playing a role.” Her voice faltered for an instant, and then gathered strength. “Perhaps, Mr. Morgan, you—intrigued me because you are different from the other men I have met. You give the impression that you say what you feel; do as you want. You are not afraid of what people may say or think, are you? I don’t know if I should be frightened of you or—”
His fingers bit into her shoulders and she winced. The laughter had gone from his eyes and they looked hard and bleak.
“For God’s sake! You find me intriguing because I mistook you for a whore the first time we met—and treated you like one? If you want the truth, you’ve intrigued me ever since—particularly since I could have sworn you kissed me back. But I learned a long time ago to run like hell from panting little virgins, full of curiosity and teasing little tricks.”
“Ohh!” Her gasp was full of outrage, but he went on inexorably, his hands bruising her shoulders.
“No, don’t try to pull away, I’m not through yet! You wanted honesty, remember? I want you, Ginny Brandon—I have from the beginning, and I’m sure you’ve known it. But I’ve tried to stay as far away from you as much as possible, because you’re the worst kind of poison. A nice girl, a Senator’s daughter, and by God, a virgin. I’ve not been respectable for most of my life—I’ve wanted women and taken them and never bothered too much with preliminaries. What I’m trying to tell you, I guess, is that this whole thing is crazy—I had no right to ask you to come up here with me, and you—damn your green eyes, you should have known better than to come!”
“Why not?” The same green eyes he’d damned flashed defiance at him. No, this time she would outface him, she would not back down. “You are right, you know, I am curious. And why should I not be, merely because I am what you call a ‘nice girl?’ I’m a woman, Steve Morgan, and you look at me as if I were a woman, and yet there are so many things I do not understand! You told me you want me, and I don’t even know what that really means, or what I am supposed to feel! When Carl kissed me, I—”
His fingers bit into her shoulders and she gave a small cry of pain.
“So you’re a virgin who plays at passion?” he said brutally, “and this, no doubt, is in the nature of an experiment? Very well, Miss Brandon, I’ll try to oblige, just so you’ll have a basis for comparison the next time you kiss Carl Hoskins.”
Sweet Savage Love Page 12