Sweet Mountain Magic

by Rosanne Bittner

But Charlet St. Claire would have traded all of it to have had her daughter back. The little girl had grown into a beautiful young woman, and when their old friends the Cousteaus had visited, their son Raphael, then twenty-five, saw the beautiful woman Marietta had become, and he soon knew who he wanted to marry.

  Marietta had been barely sixteen then, and she had in turn fallen in love with Raphael, a handsome young man, well educated and well mannered. Raphael had remained in Austin, finding a second love in Texas itself. He had loved it just as much as James St. Claire had come to love it. But Charlet had never loved Texas, and she hated it even more now. Texas had destroyed her darling Marietta, stolen her away and brought her to an untimely death. Yes, surely Mary was dead. There was no longer any hope the girl was still alive.

  Charlet blamed this on Mary’s father. If the man had not insisted on bringing the entire family to Texas, Mary still would have been alive. If only Raphael and Marietta had gone back to New Orleans to live. If only. If only.

  The wedding had been spectacular. Within a year after Rafe had come to Texas, he had begun pleading with James St. Claire to allow him to marry Marietta. James had thought his daughter was still too young, but even Marietta had joined in the pleading, and the man had finally given in. They had all traveled to New Orleans for the wedding, so that old friends and relatives on both sides of the family could be present for the spectacular affair.

  They were married in a grand ceremony in a huge Catholic church. There were several missions in Texas, but none to compare with the church in which Rafe and Mary were married in New Orleans. Marietta had never looked more beautiful. She had been seventeen then.

  Could it really have been only sixteen months ago? The summer of 1845, it had been. Raphael and Marietta had spent their honeymoon in New Orleans, then had returned to Texas to live with James and Charlet upstairs in this very house, a house James had built just to accommodate their daughter and new son-in-law.

  It was a sprawling two-story home, made of stone so it would be cool. The roof was steeply pitched, with lovely gingerbread trim along all the eaves and gables. A beautiful wheel window had been built into one end of Raphael and Marietta’s bedroom, made of the finest stained glass.

  How happy they all had been. Only ten months after the marriage the baby had been born, a fine, healthy little girl. Had it really been only last spring? It all seemed so unreal now. If only Rafe and Mary hadn’t gone for that buggy ride. If only the Texas militia had been closer. Perhaps if they could have gone after Mary and the baby sooner…

  There were so many if’s. They had been so sure there would be no more trouble with the Comanche. The Indians were supposed to have been gone, all of them rooted out and put onto reservations. They hadn’t dreamed the few angry renegades still running in the distant mountains would come so close to the house.

  “Must have been hungry, looking for food,” a Texas Ranger had told them. “Then they saw your daughter.” He’d looked down at the floor. “They probably don’t have any women with them up there in the mountains. I’m afraid it might be best if she’s killed rather than found, Mrs. St. Claire. And they’ll probably kill the baby out of pure anger. They’ve lost everything, and there is still a lot of hatred out there.”

  Rafe had been badly wounded but had survived. Mary and the baby had been taken. Their tiny newborn baby was found days later, its head crushed. Mary had never been found.

  Now the Rangers were out in the hills again, searching for someone they were sure was dead by now. But James St. Claire would not believe his daughter was dead. He had spent nearly his last dime paying men extra money to do nothing but search for her. But it had been six months since Mary had been taken. They could no longer even find any renegade camps. It was as though the Indians and Mary had melted into the hills, and sometimes none of it seemed real at all.

  But it was real—hideously real. Her beautiful Marietta was gone. The baby was dead. The storybook marriage was over. Even if they found Mary, what would she be like? She would not be the same Marietta St. Claire Cousteau who had been taken that day.

  Charlet heard horses then and rushed to the door, stepping out onto the porch. Flower pots decorated the porch, which covered two sides of the lovely home. It was late November, but quite warm here in Austin. All the flowers were still in bloom. Charlet searched the group of men as they came closer. James was with them. He and Rafe always took turns accompanying the soldiers when they went on a search.

  There was no woman with them. Again they had returned empty-handed. Charlet felt the terrible ache return to her chest. Marietta! Her beautiful daughter! She watched her husband dismount. He looked older, grayer, terribly tired. He walked toward her, along with the captain of the Rangers who had gone on this particular search. James just looked at his wife with bloodshot eyes.

  “Still nothing,” was all he said. “There’s no use going out again, Charlet.”

  He walked past her into the house. She turned to the soldier. “I told him we should have stayed in New Orleans, but he wouldn’t listen to me,” she said bitterly.

  “I wouldn’t be too hard on him, ma’am. He just thought he was doing what was best for the family, coming here to help build a new state. For all intents and purposes, your daughter wasn’t in any danger. That attack by those renegades was just a freak thing. Things like that just don’t happen in this area anymore.”

  “Well, it did happen! It did! James might love Texas, but I don’t! The only reason I’m still here is because Marietta might be found.” She closed her eyes and breathed deeply before continuing. “I’m sorry, Captain Nielsen. I know you’ve done your best. I know some things just happen and we can’t do anything about them, like disease and the elements. But this could have been avoided.”

  “It’s happened to a lot of families in Texas, ma’am. It’s a hard land, but it’s getting better. It’s the brave ones like yourself, who come here and sacrifice so much, who will make this the best state in the Union someday.”

  “I’m sorry, Captain, but I don’t care about the state of Texas right now. I only know that coming here has cost me my daughter and granddaughter. I don’t think I can bear any more. And Rafe will be crushed when he finds out you came back empty-handed again.”

  The captain pushed back his hat slightly. “All I can say is, I’m sorry, Mrs. St. Claire. And don’t be too hard on your husband. He seems to me to be failing fast. I think this whole thing is taking its toll. It wasn’t really his fault, you know. Not really.”

  The man turned and left, his own heart heavy. He’d seen so much loss—disease, torture, devastation. God only knew what Mary Cousteau had been through. He actually hoped she was dead and out of her misery.

  Charlet St. Claire turned and went inside, closing the heavy oak door, then standing there studying the lacy painting on the pretty golden glass of the door. Yes. Such a lovely home they had built for Mary and Rafe and the baby.

  Grief engulfed her. This was the end. There would be no more searching. It was useless. Mary must surely be dead by now. She wilted into a French love seat and wept in great sobs that welled up from somewhere deep in her soul.

  Her husband sat in the parlor, his head in his hands. He could hear his wife’s sobbing, and again the pain ripped through his chest at his great loss and his even greater guilt. Maybe she was right. Maybe it was all his fault. After all, he had come here to get even richer. It had all seemed so important then. Now he would give his very last cent to have his daughter back.

  Every day for the next several days Mary and Sage went out together to get wood. The only word Mary had spoken so far was “Sage,” and even when she said it, she did not seem fully aware of who he was. The bright look of love was not there in her eyes. When she clung to him in the night, it seemed a response to some subconscious need, some vague memory she had, rather than actually hugging Sage MacKenzie.

  Every day Sage chopped and Mary helped carry the wood to the travois. Sage urged her just to sit down somewhere a
nd watch, but Mary quietly insisted on helping. She mechanically picked up the wood and carried it, back and forth, back and forth, no matter how much Sage objected.

  Sage ached everywhere. He wondered how sore Mary must be, but she never showed a sign of being hurt. He couldn’t argue very much against her helping, for he sensed another storm coming, a bigger one this time. He would have to get in as much wood as possible, and just as fast as possible. He well knew how bad it could get in these mountains. Before long they might be snowed in for days, maybe weeks.

  “Wouldn’t hurt if I shot us a couple of deer or something either,” he told Mary as she came for another piece of wood. He knew she didn’t really understand, but he had to keep the conversation going. “We’ve got to have lots of meat stored up. The weather will keep it frozen for us. I’ll just hang it outside on the porch, but there might be nights I’ll have to get up and shoot some varmint for getting into it. If we’re lucky that varmint will be a bear and we’ll have even more meat, as well as a nice bear-skin blanket. There’s nothing warmer than an animal’s hide. Hell, it keeps them warm all winter. Us humans, we got to wear all kinds of clothes to stay warm. I wonder why God didn’t make us with our own fur.”

  She carried a log over to the travois and he watched her, remembering how she looked in the night, how soft and beautiful she was. “I reckon I’m not really complaining,” he added. “I think I like it better the way God made us, especially women.”

  He felt the warmth move through his blood again. Every night he had slept beside her and had not touched her. But he wanted to touch her. He wanted desperately to make love to her, not out of manly need, but an emotional need to prove she still belonged to him, a need to help erase the ugliness for her and remind her how beautiful making love could be. She had been so open before, so willing and sweet. It had been as though no one existed but Sage MacKenzie. But somehow what Terrence Lowe and Johnny White had done had brought back some ugly memory that blocked that part of her emotions.

  She returned for more wood then and Sage reached out and took her hand. She raised her violet eyes to his own. “Right now you don’t remember the real Sage, do you? I mean, you don’t connect me with the Sage running around in your mind. You’re still remembering something bad.”

  She frowned, watching him curiously.

  “Maybe when you say ‘Sage,’ you picture some other man,” he said then, almost absently. He looked closer, trying to read her eyes. “Is that it? Is there another man? A husband or something?”

  She let go of his hand and returned to picking up wood. Sage began chopping away again, realizing the thought of a husband somewhere brought on a furious jealousy. He didn’t care now if she never remembered. Even if she stayed just like she was, at least she was still his woman.

  “We’ll have to go a little farther today, Mary,” Sage called to her from his own horse. “I know where there’s a good stand of aspen and some dead trees. They’re the best—the dead ones. They get to burning faster. Pine’s a bitch to burn, and it’s messy. ’Course when you don’t have anything else, you burn what there is. We’ve got just about enough wood now. Today should do us a while and then we can rest.”

  He turned to look at her, and as always her eyes were unreadable. At least she rode her own horse just fine. He didn’t have to lead her. And she seemed to know she must stay with him and not go riding off on her own. Sage had made a travois for each horse so they could haul even more wood. The storm he had seen coming two days before had blown around to the south, but he knew by the feel of the air and the way it smelled that a lot of snow was on its way. They wouldn’t be venturing far from the cabin after today. They would have to make this haul a good one.

  “I ought to be a lot stronger now,” he told her then. “I was mighty sore there for a while. I thought I’d used all my muscles. But when I started chopping that wood, I learned better.”

  They rode on in silence for another mile beyond the spot where he had done most of his cutting, until they came to a canyon dotted with holes in its walls, put there by still another freak of nature. Sage never stopped wondering just how some of the strangest and most beautiful places in this land had been formed. Sometimes a huge rock formation could be seen standing in the middle of wide-open land, as though someone had carelessly thrown the rocks there; sometimes it would be one massive rock lying alone. Now he was wondering how those holes had gotten in the canyon wall. Some were as big as caves.

  At the foot of the canyon wall ran a narrow little valley, filled with aspen and a lot of scrub brush. A stream meandered along the valley floor. Here the canyon walls were so high that the wind literally roared through them toward the top. But down below it was peaceful.

  “Here we are. Make us a little fire like you always do, and I’ll start cutting.” Sage dismounted and walked off, hatchet in hand.

  Mary dismounted, too, looking around the magnificent canyon and wondering where she was. This was a pretty place. She turned and watched Sage walking into a grove of aspen. She liked him, knew he was called Sage, felt protected around him. But there was something more, she was sure. She just couldn’t place it.

  She turned and walked in another direction to look for firewood. Just as before, certain things were coming to her without effort. With each new thing she remembered, she would always wonder where the memory had come from, but she had not reached the point of truly understanding the bearded man when he talked to her, nor did she wonder who she really was. He called her Mary. That was enough.

  She bent over and began picking up sticks and dead wood, wandering deeper, paying no attention to how far she was getting from Sage. It was quiet here. Wind howled at the top of the canyon, but not down here. She looked toward the horses but could catch only a glimpse of them through the trees. She could see one of them grazing, but then it raised its head, whinnying loudly and moving away from where it had been.

  It made no sense to Mary. She only turned and looked for more wood. Her arm was heavy with it, but she needed just a little more and she could make a good fire.

  As she bent for another piece she heard an odd sound, like a deep growl. She straightened, looking around. Her chest tightened with alarm, yet she had no idea what it was that frightened her. She could sense fear and danger, but she could not connect them to anything physical.

  She heard the growl again, this time louder. It was to her left. She frowned, watching in frozen silence as the trees and brush rustled in that direction. Then her eyes widened when a huge grizzly bear crashed through the underbrush, then stopped and stood staring at her. He rose up on his great hind feet, his front feet held in a pawing gesture. He let off one mighty roar, and Mary knew this was a bad thing, something that would hurt her. Her mind recognized it as a bear, sensed pain and horror. She opened her mouth to scream, but nothing would come out.

  Sage! That man Sage would help her. But she had to reach him first. She backed away as the bear took a step closer, then seemed to hesitate as though trying to determine if the little woman was worth killing and eating. Mary threw down her wood, turned, and ran toward the spot where the horses had been left. Again she opened her mouth to scream, and again nothing came out. Had Sage heard the bear’s roar? Would he know it was after her?

  She could hear a crashing sound behind her. Her breath came in short gasps as she jumped over logs and brush, running, she knew, for her very life. There came another roar behind her. She could see him then—Sage. He was running toward the clearing also, rifle in hand. The rifle! She’d seen him shoot a deer with it just the day before. They were still cutting up the meat. The rifle could kill things. Maybe it could kill the bear.

  “Duck! Duck down, Mary,” Sage yelled to her, raising his rifle.

  Those words she understood. She knew the bear was right behind her, but she trusted this man called Sage. He was good to her. And she realized he couldn’t shoot his rifle at the bear if she was in front of it, or she would be dead like the deer. She covered her head and fell
to the ground, waiting for sharp claws to ravage her. But the bear ran right over her, none of its feet touching her. She felt it go by, heard its panting, sensed it was in front of her now.

  A shot rang out. She looked up to see the bear stagger and let off a fierce growl. It stood up again, growling and waving its front paws at Sage. Another shot rang out, and still the bear did not fall. Instead it went down on all fours and started running right toward Sage.

  Mary sensed the gravity of the situation. The bear was wounded and mad. It was going to take more than two bullets to kill it. She quickly got to her feet as Sage took aim again at the onrushing bear. He fired the rifle a third time but was unable to cock and fire it again before the grizzly lunged into him.

  “Sage!” This time Mary screamed the name. Where her voice had come from with such volume, she didn’t know; nor did she understand why suddenly she realized who he was. Sage! He was her Sage, and he was in grave danger!

  Bear and man rolled together in grass and snow, the bear still growling, bleeding heavily as it pawed at Sage, ripping through the buffalo robe and buckskins. She saw Sage pull a knife. He stabbed at the bear several times, while Mary kept screaming Sage’s name, feeling helpless. She knew if she tried to shoot the animal with the rifle, she might kill Sage.

  This was something horrible. It reminded her of something else, but she didn’t know what. She only knew it was horrible and bloody. Sage! Sage! The bear was killing him!

  Suddenly all was quiet. The roar of the bear no longer filled the canyon. Both bear and man lay still. Mary crept closer, afraid of what she would find. Would he be dead? She knew now who he was. Sage. Sage MacKenzie. She loved him. Something had happened. There had been a gap somewhere between when she had first known him and loved him, and this moment. She had no idea what it had been. She only knew days had passed since last he’d held her. She remembered his leaving one morning to go get wood. He had left her at the cabin. Now, for some reason, she was out here with him. What had happened in between?