“I promise,” she squeaked.
“We’re not going to let this be a sad day. It should be a happy time for you, Mary. You’re home, alive and well. Your husband still lives, and that’s something to thank God for. You have a chance now to start over. Maybe you’ll have another baby.” The words made him feel sick with jealousy and rage, but he dared not show it. “And then you’ll know you did the right thing, and you’ll have the child you’ve been robbed of twice. Life is going to be good to you now. God won’t let any more bad things happen to you.” He gently pulled away. “Come on now. I don’t want you crying when I leave. I want you smiling and happy. You’re okay now, and I had a part in helping you. I reckon that’s what God meant for me to do—bring you back where you belong, help you be well—and in return Sage MacKenzie got a taste of what it’s like to love and to share life with another person. That was something new for me.”
He led her toward a bench.
“We’ve sure got some great memories, don’t we, Mary?” he continued. “You just remember that nobody—nobody can take those away.” He sat down and made her sit down beside him, keeping an arm around her. “We can be together any time we want, Mary. All we have to do is close our eyes, and there we are, back in that cabin, eating at that log table, laughing over a game of cards.”
She shivered in more sobs, taking a handkerchief from a small handbag and blowing her nose and wiping her eyes. She looked at him, but he was just a blur through her tears. “I’ll think about that often, Sage. May God forgive me.”
He brought a big hand to the side of her face. “There’s nothing to forgive. I think He understands.”
She sniffed, turning and kissing his palm. “I will pray for you every day, Sage, every day. And my love will be with you wherever you go.”
He brought the other hand to her face, holding her exquisite beauty between powerful hands then, studying the violet eyes he all but worshipped. “And mine will be with you,” he almost whispered.
He leaned closer, meeting her lips gently. He kissed her, once, twice, several times, each kiss building until his lips lingered hungrily and he pulled her into his arms, searching her mouth with his tongue, wanting to remember its shape, its flavor, the feel of her against him. He moved a hand to rest under her breast, moving a thumb over the velvet, remembering the lovely, full, firm shape of her; remembering the taste of sweet, pink nipples; remembering the taste and feel of other places, the sweet nectar that was his Mary MacKenzie.
How painfully helpless he was to change any of this! How utterly cruel it was that she belonged to someone else, that Rafe Cousteau would enjoy the sweet fruits of this woman now, not Sage MacKenzie. What if he hurt her? What if he—
He released her from the kiss, gently pushing her away. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t going to do that.”
She sniffed, touching her lips with her fingers. “I wanted you to,” she said quietly. “God forgive me, but if we could get away with it, I would let you do more,” she almost groaned.
He reached over and squeezed her hand. “I’d better go.”
She grasped his hand frantically in return. “Not yet!”
“Yes.” He stood up. “You remember what I said. Don’t you ever, ever be ashamed of anything that has happened, Mary. You couldn’t help any of it.” He grasped her other hand and helped her stand up. “You’re the most beautiful, most wonderful, woman who ever walked. I’ll love you till my dying day, and I’ll never close my eyes without thinking of my Mary.”
She searched the dark eyes of the rough-hewn man called Sage MacKenzie. “And I’ll love you for always,” she answered. She forced a smile, but it was a weak one, and the tears started coming again. “Thank you, Sage MacKenzie, for loving me…helping me heal…for being so understanding. And don’t go…don’t go scaring up any more bears. Promise?”
He smiled in return, but his own tears were evident. “Promise.”
“And don’t get caught in the mountains in a snowstorm.”
“I’ll try not to.”
“Will you…go back there?” she asked softly.
He watched her for several quiet seconds. “No. Not right away. It would be too hard. But don’t you worry where I’ll go. I’ll be all right. The important thing is that you’ll be okay, and well taken care of. I think Rafe just needs a little time, but eventually he’ll be the husband you left behind and the two of you will be fine.”
She nodded. How could she tell him that something was missing now, that she could never feel the same about Rafe again? Yes, she loved him still. But it was all so different now. She would never truly be happy again. But she must not let Sage think that, nor could she let Rafe think it for one moment. He was being so good about all of it. Both of them were. Everyone was doing the right and proper thing. That was how it had to be.
“Good-bye, Sage MacKenzie. God go with you.”
He swallowed, a tear slipping down his cheek. “And with you.” He leaned down and kissed her once more, lightly. “I’ve had a lot of friends in my time,” he said then, “mountain men, Indians, and the like. But you are the best friend I ever had.”
She smiled through her tears. “Oh, yes, Sage, that’s what we’ve been, isn’t it? Such good, good friends.”
They clasped hands tightly and he nodded. “You’re doing the right thing, Mary. It’s okay.”
He reluctantly let go then, turning and mounting up. He couldn’t talk. The words wouldn’t come, and his throat was so tight it was hard to breathe. He just nodded. There were no words left.
“Good-bye,” she whispered.
He turned his horse, picking up the reins of the roan mare and leading it away. He did not look back. He dared not. If he did, he might ride back and whisk her onto his horse and ride off with her and say to hell with Rafe Cousteau.
Mary watched, somehow sensing he would not turn back and look. It was best he didn’t, for if he did, she knew she would run to him. She crumpled beside the gravestone of some poor unknown and wept bitterly.
Chapter Twenty-four
Sage rode into the nameless town with no particular purpose. He was a man without direction, and with no plans now for his future. He felt like a thing, an object that simply existed, and he thought how most animals had more purpose in life than he did at that moment.
The nights had been agony. How was Mary? Where was Mary? Was Mary thinking of him as much as he was thinking of her? The thoughts haunted him as he lay under the stars trying to rest. But there was no rest, and he fought to keep himself from riding back to find her and steal her away again.
That would have been foolish and wrong. It was done. The decision had been made and it was surely the right decision. She was where she belonged, and he had no right going back and messing it all up for her. He was angry with himself for having gone against his better judgment and having gotten involved in the first place, and he wrestled with his confusion over why God had let any of it happen. Why had Mary Cousteau been led into his life? Before she had come along, Sage MacKenzie had not had a care in the world. He had been alone and had liked being alone. He had been dependent on no one, had needed no one.
But now…now it was all different. For the first time since he’d gotten over his parents’ deaths, Sage remembered what loneliness really was. He felt strangely out of touch with himself and with nature. Before, the land, the animals, had been his friends, his home. Now those things were not enough. He had tasted the need for a woman, for children, for love and security. He had liked the flavor of it. And just when he had been about to partake of the full meal, the food had been snatched away, leaving only a lingering, teasing scent that made his mouth water and his belly growl.
Yes, he hungered for her. He hungered for her in the worst way, but he could not have her. Nothing satisfied him now. There was no joy in life.
He slowed his horse as he approached a group of men who were yelling and raising their fists. They stood in a circle, apparently watching something. Dust billowed up from th
e center of the circle, and Sage guessed there was a fight taking place.
He rode closer. Now that he was in Texas, a land new to him, he had decided to take the long way back north, going south and west first to see what there was to see. There was no hurry, and he had no special plans. He decided he might as well see more of this land, and in spite of its heat and barren appearance, it held a beauty of its own. He thought maybe he only felt that way because Texas was where Mary was from.
It still gave him a chill to think that a woman from this land so far away from the Rockies of Wyoming could have come into his life. Surely there was a reason, but try as he might, he could not come up with an answer. It was simply cruel fate that had brought her to him and then had taken her away again.
He dismounted and tied his horse, walking into the circle of men to see a buckskin-clad man of perhaps twenty-five scrapping with three men at once. No one in the crowd seemed inclined to help the poor soul, who was holding his own but was a bloody mess and was beginning to waver. He was apparently a hell of a fighter, but three men on one were odds few men could handle indefinitely.
The crowd was too boisterous and too involved in the scrap for Sage to try to get an answer out of any of them as to what the fight was about. But it most certainly didn’t seem like a fair one, and when two of the three opponents grabbed the first man by the arms, and the third man made ready to pummel the poor single fighter while he was helplessly being held, Sage found it impossible not to get involved. He broke through the crowd and landed into the third man, knocking him sideways just as he made ready to drive a big fist into the single man’s privates.
The crowd went wild. Now there was a new man in on the melee, and that was just fine with them. In these lonely towns in this big land, anything was welcome as entertainment, and now a stranger had come into the picture. The single man broke away from those who held him and landed a magnificent punch squarely into the nose of one of them. The blow made a cracking sound, and the man went down, blood pouring from his nose. He covered his face and crawled away.
Seeing that he had help seemingly brought the single fighter renewed energy, and he turned to charge into the second man while Sage rolled on the ground with the third man. Now it was one on one for each man, and all the sorrow and torment that had built up inside Sage MacKenzie over Mary came pouring out through his fists. He realized it actually felt good to fight. He wanted to fight, pretended his opponent was Rafe Cousteau; no, it was Johnny White, then Comanches—all men who had touched Mary MacKenzie. Some had hurt her, but Rafe wouldn’t hurt her. That tormented him more than any of the others. Rafe would enjoy her. Rafe would give her pleasure, and she would take him willingly because he was her husband.
The agony of it spilled out in cruel blows, and although his opponent was as big as Sage and a good fighter, he was no match for Sage’s bitter frustrations. Sage pounded him into a bloody pulp until finally men had to pull him off and hold him back.
“You’re killin’ him, mister!” someone shouted. “Hell, slavery ain’t something you gotta kill somebody over!”
“The hell it ain’t!” someone else shouted. “Someday this whole damned country will be at war over slavery, you watch! And I’ll by God fight for the rights of Texas citizens to own slaves! Our economy would go to hell without them!”
“And you’ll go to hell for buyin’ and sellin’ human beings!” The words came from the young man in buckskins, who had beaten his final opponent into unconsciousness.
The crowd broke into vehement arguing, and Sage was totally confused as to what in God’s name it was all about. Slavery? What the hell did he care about slavery? Was that what this fight had been about? Men were suddenly shoving both him and the other buckskin-clad man. Both of them were dirty, bloody messes, the younger man in much worse condition than Sage.
The crowd was telling them to get out of town, and Sage realized he had entered into a fight over something he cared nothing about. He was alive with anger now, anger over Mary, an anger that billowed up against these men as they shoved him and the stranger whom he had helped. It finally erupted and Sage whirled, pulling his big hunting knife.
“Back off!” he growled.
The crowd quieted and let go of Sage and the other man.
“I don’t give a damn one way or the other about slavery,” Sage snarled at them. “All I know is I saw a man getting mauled by three others and it looked goddamn unfair. I’m a stranger here and I don’t even know what the hell town this is, but I do know I’m leaving it, and the next man who touches me is gonna know how a buffalo feels when it gets skinned!”
The man he had helped stared at him, grinning. He stood taller, gazing at the others with a look of victory on his face. “I’m leavin’, too,” he told them with a strong Southern drawl. He grasped the moment, seeing that if he was going to get out of town alive, this was the time to try it. While Sage backed away, still wielding the knife, the man marched through the crowd to his own horse and mounted up.
Sage turned and climbed up on his Appaloosa, shoving his knife into its sheath and turning the horse, to which the roan mare was already tied. No one tried to stop him, and the crowd stood staring, none of them eager to find out just how good the stranger was with the knife. They backed away and Sage headed out of town. The man he had helped kicked his black gelding into a hard run, catching up with Sage and riding beside him, saying nothing until the crowd was well behind them.
“I don’t rightly know how to thank you, mister. They was aimin’ to leave me for dead back there.”
Sage kept his eyes ahead and said nothing at first, still angry. How he wanted to kill Rafe Cousteau, for no good reason other than the man was Mary’s husband! He never dreamed it would be this bad, the longing, the loneliness, the agony. It had felt good to use his fists on someone, even though now his knuckles were beginning to swell.
“You always go around gettin’ involved in other people’s affairs?” the stranger was asking him.
Sage thought of Mary. “I reckon so, it seems,” he finally answered, sadness in the words. “But all it brings is trouble, like back there.”
“Well, you did right, mister. And I’m obliged. I’d like to do somethin’ in return. I’d pay you, but I ain’t a rich man. I’m just a poor man from Tennessee lookin’ for some direction in life. I was on my way south to Mexico. I aim to join the other volunteers there and give that there Santa Anna one more whompin’.”
Sage frowned and finally turned to look at the man. Through all the dirt and blood he could tell the man was handsome, with a boyish air about him like that of a man not completely wise in the ways of life. He realized then with surprise that there was good reason for that boyish appearance. This man was not in his twenties as Sage had first guessed amid all the confusion. He looked more like seventeen or eighteen.
Sage slowed his horse. “I got the impression back there you were fighting against slavery. I thought folks in Tennessee were the kind that were for owning slaves,” he remarked. “I don’t know a hell of a lot about such things, but that’s what I always heard—that they own slaves in Southern states.”
“They do. But that doesn’t mean everybody from there is for slavery. Hell, my folks weren’t rich enough. But our neighbors were, and one of my best friends was a Negro boy. We had some good times together, till they sold him off.” The young man’s voice lost its sassiness and saddened. “I miss the hell out of him, and I’ll never forget him. He had a bad life, mister, even got whipped a few times. And even though his skin was black, he was just a man, same as me. I say it’s wrong. ’Course that didn’t make me too popular back home, so I decided to leave for a while, see what else is out here in this big country. Then I thought maybe I’d go down to Mexico, see some real fightin’—get into a real gun-totin’ war if I could. I like a good fight.”
Sage rolled his eyes. “That’s obvious—typical for a kid your age.”
“I’m no kid! I’m eighteen! And I’ve been on my own for t
hree years now. Between me bein’ against slaves, and havin’ a drunken pa who liked to light into me now and again, I took off on my own at fifteen. I’ve been handlin’ myself just fine ever since. Randy Lucas don’t need anybody lookin’ after him.”
“Looked to me like you needed somebody real bad back there.”
The young man reddened slightly. “Well, that was the first time I got into that fix. That bunch was from a nearby tavern. I went in there to get a drink and got caught up in an argument over slavery.”
“Taverns are a bad place to bring up something that touchy—especially when you’re someplace where you know most people have one opinion. I’m told Texas is a slave state.” He thought of Mary again. She had told him that. Again the pain swept through him. “If you want to live to be old, kid, don’t start fights in taverns where you’re a stranger in town.”
The young man scowled. “I’ll remember that.”
They rode on for a moment saying nothing.
“Randy Lucas, that’s your name then?” Sage asked suddenly.
“Yes, sir. What’s yours?”
“Sage. Sage MacKenzie. I’m originally from Missouri, but I left eighteen years ago. That’s why I’m so out of touch with this slavery issue. Lived most all those eighteen years in the mountains—trapping beaver, fighting Indians, hunting.”
“Yeah? That sounds exciting! So, you’re one of them Western mountain men! Hell, they tell stories about men like you back home.”
Sage smiled sadly and shrugged. “Pretty much exaggerated, I reckon. At any rate, there’s no money in trapping anymore. Folks have gone to silk or other kinds of furs. I’ve done a little scouting, led a couple of wagon trains over the mountains. I’m a man without much purpose at the moment. I reckon I’ll head back into the mountains.”
Randy shook dirt from his hair. “What the hell brought you to Texas, of all places, MacKenzie? Hell, you must have come from way north of here.”
Sage rode quietly for a moment, the ugly ache penetrating his heart again. “It’s a long story,” he finally answered quietly, “one I’m not about to spill out to a total stranger.”
Sweet Mountain Magic Page 36