He felt the shape of her stomach with his palm. The baby, as if knowing its father's touch, squirmed. "I'm going to fret about you, girl, while I'm gone."
"There's no need to. Hannah says I'm as healthy as a bee in butter." She let a peep of a smile show. "Though Pogey says I look all swoll up like a toad in a churn."
"Still and all, I'm bringing that doctor back with me when we pass through Deer Lodge," he said instead, "even if I got to do it at gunpoint."
"Yes, Mr. McQueen. Thank you." She rather wanted a doctor on hand when the baby was born, which would not be for another month, although she felt monstrous, as if she'd swallowed a dozen watermelons whole. She hadn't told anyone, not even Hannah, how frightened she was of what was coming. She dreamed some nights of her mother. In the dream her mother would not stop screaming. She screamed while they sealed her in the coffin and screamed while they buried her in the cold, windswept cemetery, but only Clementine seemed able to hear her.
"And you know what to do if there's trouble?" Gus said.
"Yes, Mr. McQueen."
She resisted the urge to shiver. Gus had mounted an old fire bell on the roof of the new house. It made a ferocious clang and clatter when rung. Rafferty, living now by himself in the buffalo hunter's cabin, could hear it easily. All she had to do was pull on the rope and he would come. It made her feel safe and at peril, both at the same time. She trusted Zach Rafferty to protect her from Indians and wolves and grizzlies, but who would protect her from him? Who would protect her from herself?
The other times Gus had ridden to Butte Camp on mining business she had gone with him, but this time she was too bulky with child. It had taken six months and four trips before Gus had at last put together a consortium of investors to operate the Four Jacks. The final paperwork was to be signed this week, and the mining works and stamp mill would be in operation by spring. The investors, calling themselves the Four Jacks Consortium, had leased the mine from Pogey and Nash, agreeing to pay them half the profits on all the ore the consortium dug up and refined that yielded at least twenty-five percent silver. And Gus in turn would get twenty percent of the two old prospectors' share.
They didn't look to be getting rich off it any time soon, though. Gus had told her there was a saying that you needed a gold mine to keep your silver mine going.
He pulled on her lower lip with his thumb, a lip that was red and slightly swollen from his kiss. "I've learned to trust you least, wife, when you're yes-Mr.-McQueening me." His mouth turned serious. "I know you two get along about as well as a pair of polecats in a sack, but you will call on Zach if you need him?"
"Yes, yes, I shall. I promise," she lied. Iron Nose would have to burst into her parlor bristling with scalping knives and wielding half a dozen hatchets before she pulled that bell. It was comforting that, with half a hay meadow between them, whole days could pass now when she and Rafferty didn't even have to exchange a howdy. And as long as he stayed away from her, she didn't have to think about the sweet seizing she felt now in her heart when she saw him, and the way he made her soul tremble.
"Jeeeesus God!" Pogey bellowed, white clouds billowing around his head like steam from a locomotive stack. "We leavin' any time this week, Gus? My ass is already so frozen stuck to this saddle I couldn't crack a fart without losin' skin."
Nash whacked him in the stomach, causing a minor avalanche to slide off the brim of his hat. "Quit cussin'."
"What else is a man to do in weather like this, 'sides cuss? Cold like this sure do make a soul hanker for hell."
"You call this cold?" Nash scoffed. "Why I recollect the winter of 'fifty-two. It was so cold that year your spit'd freeze solid before it hit the ground. It was so cold the hair on your chest broke off when you scratched it. It was so cold icicles a foot long—"
"Ha! When a hen cackles, she's either layin' or lyin'. Who ever asked you for a blamed lecture on the subject?"
"A man can learn a heap of things if he keeps his ears washed and his mouth shut."
"I guess I better get," Gus said, "before those two melt all the snow with the hot air they're blowing and we find ourselves drowning in a flash flood." He squinted up into the floating flakes. "I reckon one good thing'll come out of this storm. It means the Reverend Jack will be crawling into a hole somewhere to drink away the winter, and we'll be spared the embarrassment of his preaching to our friends and neighbors while he fleeces them of their hard-earned coin."
Clementine brushed the accumulating powder off his shoulders. "I think perhaps Mr. Rafferty is right about your father. The best way to fight him is to ignore him."
"Hunh. At least that's one thing you two've managed to agree on." Smiling, he drew her to him to kiss her one last time. "I'll bring you a surprise from Butte."
"What?" she said eagerly. "What will you bring me?"
His laugh bounced across the snow-blanketed valley. "Now, if I told you, girl, then it wouldn't be a surprise."
She watched them ride away until they were swallowed by the snow. It was falling harder now. Big clumpy flakes swirled around her head, wetting her face and hair. She gathered the shawl closer to her. The air was raw and piercing, and dozens of chores awaited her inside, yet she lingered still.
She felt an odd tightening in her womb, and again the baby squirmed. Until yesterday she had felt as if her belly was almost up beneath her chin, but this morning she had awakened to a strange lightening. The baby felt alien to her now, like a thing apart from her.
She drew in a deep breath, smelling the cold that pinched her nose and the smoke from the chimney that rose blue against the sky. She lifted her face to the snow, tasting it on her lips, letting its coldness sting her flushed face. She opened her eyes wide, watching the flakes fall, one after the other, from the blank infinity above. She laughed suddenly, out loud, and stretched her fingers toward the sky, as if they could grow and turn into wings and carry her up into the crumbling clouds.
She heard the snick of wood rolling over crusty ice and frozen grass, and she felt a suffocating, heart-juddering jolt of panic before she turned.
Rafferty's long legs cut toward her across the hay meadow. He was pulling a cord of wood on a red pung behind him. She watched him come, squinting against the winter glare. Silhouetted against the stark and whirling whiteness, he was fierce and beautiful and frightening. She stared at his face, at the strong lines and angles of bone under the dark, taut skin. His black Stetson shaded his eyes from her, not letting her see how he was looking at her.
He suddenly seemed too fierce and beautiful to bear. Her gaze dropped to the braided frogs on his sheepskin coat as he stopped before her.
He had a bridle draped over his shoulder—a bridle of smooth, well oiled leather and etched silver cheek plates and buckles. He slung it off and held it out to her.
It dangled from his hand, a hand that looked dark and naked against the cold white light around them. She didn't take it. "What's this?" she asked, though she knew what it was: Moses's bridle.
"This is the first snowfall, and you're still here."
"I have plenty of bridles, I don't need another."
He tossed the tack onto the load of wood. "I'm not giving you the bridle. I mean, I am, but only as a symbol of the horse it belongs with."
"I don't want that horse. He's big and he's ugly and he bites."
"He don't bite." He shifted his feet, his boots squeaking in the fresh snow. "You're hard on a man, Boston. Hard on his pride. I've played some crooked games in my time, but this is one bet I don't aim to welsh on."
A heavy silence fell between them. She felt an overwhelming urge to touch him, simply touch him.
She couldn't see his eyes, but she felt their heat like a caress on her face. "Do you still want me gone?"
"Yes." The word had left his taut mouth in a huff of white breath.
"Why?"
For a moment he stood there, not moving, saying nothing.
But she saw his chest give a hard hitch. His voice broke over the words.
"You know why, Boston. And God damn you to the hottest hell for it."
Something cracked inside her. Those jagged, jigsawed pieces of herself shifted again, shifted and came together in a way that couldn't, should never, have been possible.
He didn't fill the empty spaces in her heart, this man; he deepened them. He didn't calm the furies of her soul; he stirred them. And yet, oh, how she needed him. She needed him in her life the way the eagle needed the wind to soar with, and the buffalo the tall grass to roam in. The way thunder needed lightning to make a storm. He was, and she needed him to be.
She needed him, and he could never, ever be hers.
She lifted her head and with the tips of her fingers pushed his hat up so that she could see his eyes. But they never showed anything, those eyes, not really. Always hard and flat, and as cold as a winter sun. If he had mowed her down on the streets of Boston with a big-wheeled ordinary she would never have had the courage to run off with him. Not with those eyes.
"I will not take your horse, Mr. Rafferty."
"You damn well will take him."
She took a step back and then another. She stopped and scooped up a handful of snow, packing it into a ball. "I damn well will not," she said in the Bostoniest voice she owned, and heaved the snowball at his head.
She hit his chest instead, and the startled look on his face would have made her laugh, if she hadn't wanted to scream and scream and scream from the terrible, aching pain of needing him.
She bent over to gather more snow and straightened up, only to catch a ball of it flush on her face.
"You will," he said, panting a little.
She spat snow out of her mouth, shook it off her eyelashes and her hair. "I won't," she said as she threw one that hit him on the chin. She huffed a pleased little grunt when she saw him shudder as the snow went down inside the open collar of his coat.
He took a step toward her, and she whirled to run.
But she was bulky and clumsy and he caught her easily. His hands fell on her shoulders and pivoted her around so they were face to face. Her swollen belly made a space between them, but it was not enough. Where he touched her she burned, and where she wanted him to touch her, she burned even hotter. She wet her lips, tasting ice and the heat of memory.
His gaze fastened on her mouth. He lowered his head and his hand stole up to frame her cheek, his thumb stroking the line of her jaw. Their breath entwined like white wedding ribbons in the air. Snow fell between them, gentle and cold. She watched the crease in his cheek deepen as his lips moved. "You will," he said.
"I won't." Her eyelids drifted closed and her mouth softened, and she waited, waited, waited...
She heard him pull in a deep breath. When at last she opened her eyes, he was gone.
Clementine looped the last string of popcorn around the branches and stepped back to admire her handiwork. It was a fine Christmas tree, so tall it brushed the ceiling. Its heavy limbs dripped with candles, strips of paper, and pieces of ribbon and lace. Its spicy scent filled the room.
But the sight of the tree brought her no pleasure, and she turned away from it to the ice-latticed window. It was a lead-colored day, still and cold. The clouds, dense and soggy, promised more snow. She pressed the heels of her hands into the small of her back, wincing from the pain, trying to stretch it out. She glanced over her shoulder at the calendar clock that hung beside the fireplace—nearly three o'clock. It would be dark soon.
Sighing, she let her forehead fall to rest against the chilled pane. Gus was over a week late coming home. She worried about him, and she was lonely. The loneliness seeped into her like the cold from the glass. It was Christmas Eve and her birthday, and she was great with child. Monstrous and swollen and irritable with child. No one should have to be alone on such a day.
She moved restlessly from the window to the fire. She held out her hands to the flickering flames, but their warmth brought her no comfort. On the stone mantel she had put a milk-glass bowl filled with pinecones and wild rose berries. The smell of the cones reminded her of Christmases past. Two years ago, on the Christmas Eve when she turned sixteen, they had gone to Aunt Etta's for dinner. In the afternoon they had made that fateful visit to Stanley Addison's Photographic Gallery, and she had still been humming and crackling like an electrical wire with the excitement of it.
That day was also the first time she had pinned up her hair into coils on the back of her head and gone without a cap. She'd kept catching glimpses of herself in the mirrors and pier glasses and windowpanes, in the crystal balls that decorated Aunt Etta's tree, and each time she'd been startled. Was that grown-up girl really Clementine? When the family gathered around the tree in the parlor, Aunt Etta and her family had toasted the holidays with mulled orange wine in tall, thin glasses. Clementine had wanted so badly to join them, but her father's sharp negative shake of his head had stopped her.
It occurred to her suddenly that if someone were to hand her a glass of mulled orange wine she could drink it now and there was no one to shake his head at her. The thought brought her such a marvelous feeling of freedom that she smiled. Freedom, she decided, tasted like mulled orange wine.
She stepped back from the fire suddenly as the muscles in the small of her back and lower belly clenched and spasmed with another fierce pain. Her gaze flew up to the clock. Seven minutes had passed since the last one.
She drew in a deep breath, trying to ease the ache and her fear. She bit her lip as she looked at the rope hanging beside the front door, the rope that was attached to the fire bell on the roof. But she did not cross the room to pull it. She would wait a while longer. Perhaps these were only phantom pains. Perhaps Gus was even now riding into the yard with the doctor. She waddled back to the window. She could barely see the hitching rail beyond the porch; it had started to snow again.
Seven minutes later her monstrous belly clutched and spasmed again. She balled up her fists to keep from screaming, not from the pain but with frustration. She felt betrayed by her body, humiliated, that it would do this to her, decide to bring her baby into the world early, without waiting for its father or the doctor. Her gaze strayed back to the rope. There was only he, and he...
He called on her three or four times a day to be sure she was all right. Most times he stood outside on the porch, keeping a tight rein on his mouth and his hat carefully shadowing his eyes. He looked different and yet like a cowboy still in his sheepskin coat and the winter chaps Gus called woollies, which were made of goathide and worn with the hair on the outside. On days when the wind blew hard, he tied his bandanna over his hat so that it folded the brim down to cover his ears. On any other man it would have looked silly, but not on him.
Because of her he left the ranch buildings only for very short periods, just long enough to make sure the cattle weren't freezing or starving. He kept busy, though. She knew this because she watched him as she hovered in the concealing shadows cast by the curtains on her parlor windows. He chopped so much firewood that it was now stacked as high as the roofs of both houses. He fixed the loose corral poles. He spent hours in the barn, mending tack, she supposed, and shaping horseshoes and tools at the forge. When he wasn't working, when he was inside the buffalo hunter's cabin, she watched the smoke drift from his smokestack into the winter sky. At night a pool of lampshine spilled from the cabin's window. Sometimes she saw his silhouette cross in front of it. And once she saw him leaning on the hitching rail outside his front door, his hand curled around the neck of a whiskey bottle.
When he had to, he would cross her threshold only long enough to fill her woodbox and take out the stove ashes. She did not like having him in her house. He filled it with his smell, that mixture of horse and leather and Rafferty. A smell that lingered long after he was gone. When he was in her house, she couldn't stop herself from watching him, noticing things, like the way his hips moved when he walked across her kitchen. The way he held his head when he stoked the fire in the range and set the damper. The way his hair curled over the colla
r of his coat, and the way the bones of his strong wrist showed above his glove when he reached for a piece of wood. The way he never let her see beneath the concealing brim of his Stetson, never let her see his eyes.
This morning he had surprised her by bringing her the Christmas tree and setting it up in a corner of her parlor in a bucket of river sand. Politeness demanded that she at least invite him to stay for a cup of coffee, but she never quite got the words out and she breathed easier when he was gone.
Another violent contraction squeezed her back and stomach and she sucked in a sharp breath. She looked at the clock— seven minutes. She could deny it no longer: she was freshening and the only one to see her through it was a hell-bent cowboy who knew everything there was about the making of babies and nothing at all about the birthing of them. A hell-bent cowboy whose dark, fine-boned hands had touched many women, but none in the way he would have to touch her. A man she could hardly bear to look at because he frightened her with the wild and forbidden feelings he stirred in her heart. Yet she would have to undergo the most indelicate and frightening experience of her life before his terrible yellow eyes.
She tried to take a deep, slow breath. She would not let herself be afraid. Her gaze went back to the rope. If she rang the bell he would come to her, but it would be hours yet before she actually gave birth. Her hands curled, her fingers tracing the scars on her palms. She would do what had to be done, but she could not bear to have him in her house, to see her... as he would see her. Not in the house her husband had built for her.
She dressed carefully, as if she were paying a social call. She covered her hair with her black beaver bonnet. She put on black Limerick gloves and her traveling cloak, the one she'd worn the night of her elopement. Its voluminous folds barely met across the broad expanse of her belly.
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