“You belly up for his whiskey quick enough, Seamus Donegan.”
“Damn right I do, horse-trader!” He laughed, taking up the hickory axe-handle once more. It gave a solid, comforting feeling to his callused palms, much like the feel of his Henry repeater. “Fact be, yourself owes me a drink as well. I’ll be expecting payment in full this evening.”
“This evening it is,” Marr replied, staring back over his shoulder. “My, but you’re all muscle,” he marveled more to himself. “No wonder they’ve got a lad like you swinging that big axe.”
Stuffing the damp sacking in a pocket of his cavalry britches, Donegan put his blades back to work, steadily working his way up a trunk, trimming the branches from sides and top. That very first day working on civilian contract for Capt. Frederick Brown some weeks ago, Seamus realized the other men went at this trim-work all wrong. They started at the top of the tree, working backward down the trunk, stumbling over the thick branches they had yet to cut.
Wasn’t too many trees and a lot of blood drawn from his punctured hide by broken limbs before the Irishman figured another angle at it. While the others fought their way down the trunk, Seamus worked his way up. Starting at the bottom, he trimmed the lowermost branches. Then stepped up for the next series of limbs, never stumbling or faltering in his task.
Took no time at all before the subcontractor to the army, watching in awe, saw that the Irishman was completing better than two trees to every other man’s one. And seeming to do it with half the effort as well.
“Tell you what, Irishman,” Aubrey Pitman declared one afternoon after his wood crews had been at work on the slopes of the Pinery for about a week. “Make you a handsome proposition.”
Seamus eyed him warily. “What’s that, Mr. Pitman?”
“Son, if you continue to chop more wood than the others, I figure one of two things gonna happen.”
“Here I was, fixing to ask you for a raise.”
Pitman snorted with a chuckle. “Cain’t do that. Captain Brown fixes the quartermaster employee wages. As a civilian you already make more than them thirteen-dollar-a-month enlisted boys.”
“So, since you’d give me no raise, you figure I’ll just go back to cutting no more than the slowest men … since he’s getting paid the same as me.”
Pitman nodded. “Aye.”
“No sense in busting a sweat then, is there?”
“There’s still the deal I wanna offer you.”
His gray eyes narrowed on the contractor. “So, tell me.”
“Every sundown you finish with a tally of logs twice that of the best man in the trimming crews for that day, I’ll give you a bonus.”
“Dollar a tree, you say?” Seamus asked, chuckling.
He wagged his head. “Cain’t do that, but I will see you get what you’re worth. You cut twice as much as the best man—I’ll see you get a extra day’s wages.”
Seamus licked his lips, drawing long on the damp, blanket-wrapped canteen, wishing the warm water something more heady. “A man can always use more drinking money, can’t he, Mr. Pitman?”
Aubrey’s head bobbed. “Is it a deal, son? You cut twice as much as the best man, you get twice the pay?”
He flicked his tongue across his chapped lips again, tasting success already. “Lad like me can hardly go wrong—now, can he?”
“Donegan!”
They both turned to see a pair of civilians fighting a team of mules up the slope in their direction. One of the pair hollered out again.
“You gonna sit there rubbing on the bossman all day? Or you gonna help us get these’r logs o’ yours hitched up?”
Donegan clambered to his feet, flinging the canteen down on the grass beside his shirt as he watched the two men back their mules into position where they could hitch the animals to three long logs the mule-team would haul downhill. Once across the Big Piney, the team would be unhitched and return for another load of three logs, while the workers below at the trail-head of the wood-road hefted those logs brought to them onto the running gears of wagons, from which the men had removed the freight boxes so the thirty- to forty-foot logs could be carted past the Sullivant Hills to the site of the army’s newest post in this heart of Red Cloud’s hunting grounds.
“Yeah, Mr. Pitman.” Seamus held out his sore hand, waiting for the contractor to scramble to his feet. They smiled at one another as they shook on their private bargain. “Twice the money, for twice the work. We got us a deal!”
Chapter 16
Your bleeming mind’s playing tricks on you, Seamus.
The big Irishman ground to a halt, cocking an ear downstream. And listened to the soft, almost inaudible sound of a woman’s song. She was humming to herself.
If any man could recognize the faint sound of the female voice, that man stood beside the Little Piney at this moment, a smile slowly beginning to crease his beard.
All around Donegan the robber jays dove and squawked and protested. From time to time the breeze nustled the summer-dry bullberry leaves among the nearby willow at the stream’s edge. But there it was again. That same soft whisper of a woman’s voice. As enchanting, as alluring, as seductive as any siren song young Seamus had succumbed to in his life.
He had ridden back to the civilians’ camp downstream from the water-powered sawmill engineer Gregory had planted in the middle of the Little Piney. Come here alone to fetch some jerked meat and two canteens of water for Sam Marr’s midday meal. The felling of trees and the loading of the timber was hot and sweaty work these late-summer days down in the Pinery miles away. Like any man among those laborers, Seamus welcomed this chance to ride back to camp. Far better than swinging that double-bladed axe or yanking on one end of a two-man whipsaw.
Seamus had convinced himself the ride back was enough pay in itself. Until he heard her voice.
After hanging the canteens over the horn and stuffing Marr’s jerky into a saddlebag, Seamus lashed the big gray’s rein to a tent-peg, where the animal could nuzzle among the sunburnt grasses. Then he set off on foot. Downstream. Following the sound of that liquid voice. His mind grew busy, imagining who he would find having herself a midday picnic, far from the bustle and noise and dust and wood-shavings blown about with the fort construction.
A picnic. Alone by the creek. And downstream was not the safest place for a woman to be. Whoever she was, he decided, she needed reminding to move upstream, closer to the stockade.
As he pushed through the willow and creeper hemming Little Piney creek, Seamus mulled on the female he might find. Maybe Carrington’s wife. Or some officer’s woman. Perhaps … even the young mother who had nursed her infant at the Crazy Woman. Remembering her swollen breasts engorged with milk, pale, opaque droplets clinging to the rosy nipples, made Donegan’s heart race a bit faster.
She’s a married one, he chided himself as he tromped on through the willow, with each loud step drawing closer to the sound of that sweet voice singing a soft, lilting tune. That woman’s got call on her.
Rounding a soft bend in the creek some distance downstream from the sawmill itself, Seamus was in no way prepared for what, or who, he found. And how he found her.
Through the thick copse of willow and gray-backed bullberry, he now saw no picnic blanket spread upon the grassy bank. Instead, the first thing the young Irishman spied was the long folds of a woman’s dress flung carelessly across a willow branch. A few feet beyond, his eyes found the worn ruffles of bloomers swaying on a bullberry bush. Beside them hung the lacy, unbuttoned bodice dancing lightly on the August breeze. Farther down the bank, the heavy boots of a working woman.
He stood, petrified, confused for the moment. This ain’t no soldier’s woman, he decided from the look of the clothing.
Beside those scuffed, dusty boots lay the thigh-length woolen stockings. Atop them a faded, yellow kerchief Seamus imagined the woman tied round her hair.
He held his breath. Eyes narrowing through the willow. Donegan could not see the woman yet, but he could hear he
r splashing in the cool water just on the far side of a clump of willow that overhung the stream. A few yards away … and Donegan found himself swallowing, suddenly nervous. Palms sweating.
Should he go on, to warn her of the very real danger? Was it proper out here … proper for such concern, such manners?
For a moment he remembered what Sam Marr mentioned time and again to him: that Sam found it odd how the hard, ofttimes cold and resolute Donegan, a man who could be stingy with his feelings, became suddenly of manners in the presence of women.
Seamus laughed to himself. Women deserved to be treated different, he figured. No matter how pretty or ugly they might be. No matter the circumstances or where a man might find them. Manners was manners, his dear mother had taught him early among the green hills of his homeland.
Then he decided, convinced that no man he knew would find a thing wrong with warning the woman. So Seamus stepped round the clump of willow that overhung the gurgling creek, shielding her from view.
Stopping in his tracks, Donegan’s breath caught in his throat. With a mouth gone suddenly dry.
No two ways about it, that woman standing in the quiet pool where the Little Piney eddied against the bank had to be the most beautiful thing his gray Irish eyes had ever laid upon. Even more beautiful than the sweet colleen who had taken him out of the Boston alleyways and into her room above those stinking streets. The sweet colleen who made her living entertaining fine-dressed gentlemen callers but gave herself willingly to the skinny, dark-haired adolescent Seamus Donegan through the rest of that cold, damp winter and into a rainy spring when first he came to Amerikay.
It shook the Irishman to his heels to realize this water sprite had no rival in his memory. More beautiful was she than his wildest imagination.
Her back was to him as he clung in the willow. She had her head turned sideways, scrubbing a slip of old burlap over the back of her shoulders.
He swallowed hard, finally realizing he needed to breathe. Greedily, Seamus sucked at the hot, steamy air of the high plains. And found himself sinking to his knees. Not yet ready to interrupt the water sprite’s bath. Nowhere near ready to end this incredibly beautiful, provocative scene.
Sunshine and the breezes played with her hair the way a kitten would play with a ball of yarn. Tossing it about. Splaying color and hues and hints of crimson and rust in that long, curly, auburn mane of hers. Most of the tresses hung wet along her shoulders or spilled down her graceful, curved back as she rose from the surface slightly. Then turned full sideways to him, unaware that her breasts hugged the gently rippled plane of the creek. Their pointed firmness broke the surface like twin musk-rats nosing their way in tandem across a prairie pond.
Seamus had never seen such breasts.
For a long, languid moment, the young woman flung her head back, eyes closed to the bright light pouring down upon her. As if glorying in its warming caress upon her body. Then she ran her hands slowly over those breasts, wringing the water from her freckled flesh.
He felt himself growing hard, watching the young woman stroke her own flesh. Sun rays played like a thousand bits of rainbow light in each water droplet that trickled down the fine nape of her ivory neck, across the soft curve of her shoulder. Onto the rounded melons the likes of which Seamus Donegan was certain he would not see again, would he live a century of searching.
By the saints! She’s … she’s so young …
Quickly he raked the back of a hand across his dry lips, puzzled on what to do. Let her finish her bath so as not to scare her? Yes … yes!
His eyes poured over her pale skin freckled by rose and umber, caressed by both sunlight and the cool waters of the Little Piney. Seamus swallowed, with each passing second becoming more unconscious of himself, so absorbed in the young woman in the water.
“By the saints … preserve me!” he blurted out in a whisper.
Surprising himself as it slipped from his lips.
Frightened as the woman whirled about. She sank to her chin in the stream. Head bobbing side to side, darting from bank to bank.
“Who … who’s there?” she called out anxiously.
He wiped sweaty palms down his damp shirt and rose from the willows.
“S-Sorry, m’am,” Seamus stuttered. “Didn’t mean to startle——”
“How dare you scare me like that!” She flung her sudden anger at him, cheeks flushed and green eyes flashing every bit as liquid as the creek itself. Eyes every bit as fiery as the sunlight refracted off the water that danced around her shoulders as she covered those magnificent breasts beneath her folded arms.
“Didn’t mean to scare you … truly didn’t,” he said, finding himself a bit tongue-tied. Seamus pointed upstream, foot shuffling. “Heard you singing … come down here … figured to tell you——”
“Figured to take a peek at me, didn’t you?”
By the love of the saints, she is a feisty one, is she not?
“Come to warn you.”
“Warn me of what?”
His head bobbed downstream. “Injins, m’am. They’re all ’round us. No one’s told you?”
For a moment that made Seamus even more anxious, she only stared back at him. Then she slowly rose from the stream. Now he could see most of her freckled arms. And the beginning of deep cleavage, a hint of fullness hidden beneath her hands. He was certain the woman was unaware she was showing so much of her flesh to him as she rose from the water.
At the same moment, Donegan felt strangely uneasy—not quite certain she was not toying with him, taunting him with her flesh.
Without warning she flung back her head, exactly as she had to feel the sun upon her face and neck moments before. That same graceful curve to the ivory neck. Strong muscles. The press of windpipe against the surface of her flesh. The strong chin that said this one had fire in her. And this time, she laughed loud. The trickle of that laughter rang about him like the waters of icy, Big Horn snow-melt tumbling over a pebbled stream-bottom. Merry and cheerful. Without a care.
“Indians?” She laughed some more. Louder still. “Looks instead like what I’ve got to fear most is some peeping Irishman creeping up to spy on a lady’s bath.” She stared him in the eye, as if suddenly uncertain of it. “You sound Irish.”
“I am—was, I mean I am—yes. Come to America before the war.”
She measured him a moment before replying. Then nodded. “My husband fought in the war as well. Union.”
As she spoke of her husband, the woman sank back into the creek until the water rippled at her chin. Hidden once more.
Seamus nodded. “Union. Second Cavalry I was, m’am.” Then, of a sudden, he remembered more of his mother’s teachings and swept the soft-brimmed hat from the shock of curly, dark hair that rubbed his shoulders. “Seamus Donegan, m’am. Sorry. Should introduce myself.”
She giggled, lightheartedly this time. “Thank you for your manners, but, I’m not really in the position to shake your hand right now, am I, Mr. Donegan?”
Feeling like a sham dodger, Donegan’s eyes raked the grassy bank as his sweaty hands rolled the hat-brim. “My manners don’t always show at the proper times of it, I suppose.”
“You’d be most good-mannered if you’d simply leave, Mr. Donegan.”
“The Indians, m’am. They’ve been at their killing every day now.”
“You needn’t explain that to me, Mr. Donegan!” she snapped, those eyes flashing their sudden anger.
Now he nodded. “You’re right … yes’m. Best that I just leave.” Seamus slapped the hat back atop his head, then surprised himself by a quick bow from the waist. “And best you get dressed quick and scoot back close to the camp and the stockade. Much safer it’d be for a beautiful woman like you than out here alone.”
Her eyes followed the Irishman as he rounded the big clump of willow, until he was a good twenty yards upstream, his back growing smaller with each long stride.
“Mr. Donegan!”
He stopped and whirled about before sh
e had it all said. “Yes’m?”
“Do your manners also say you should allow a lady to introduce herself?”
He bobbed his head, grinning. “Sorry, m——”
“Jennifer,” she interrupted his clumsy explanation. “Jennifer Wheatley.”
Seamus swallowed. Damn! This angel of a creature belonged to that saint of a Nebraska sodbuster, James Wheatley.
“M-Met your husband, Mrs. Wheatley. Fine … fine man. I work with him up in the Pine——”
“Yes. Jim is a … fine man, Mr. Donegan.”
“I best be going,” he admitted, tapping the brim of his hat.
“Mr. Donegan, let’s just tell Jim you … we bumped into each other. Won’t do for him to worry about me out here with the Indian scares. Best if he didn’t know I came down here to bathe … where you bumped into me.”
“I figure that’s best, to let him know we … we just bumped into one another, Mrs. Wheatley. Just so’s there’s no talk.”
“And you?” Jennifer began, then paused as she pushed a handful of auburn hair from her cheek. “You’ll forget you ever saw my … caught me bathing, Mr. Donegan?”
For the first time now he chuckled lightly, and wagged his head. “Sorry, m’am. Won’t promise you something I know I can’t possibly do. Truth is, I’ll never forget such devastating beauty as yours.”
Seamus had turned and was gone among the willow as those final words dropped round her. Not at all sure if he really heard her whisper to his back as he plodded upstream.
“I was hoping you’d say that Mr. Donegan. Praying … you’d not forget me.”
Chapter 17
“Red Cloud’s five hundred lodges on the Tongue ain’t all there is, Gabe,” mulatto Jim Beckwourth said as he leaned over, whispering to his old friend, “Big Throat” Jim Bridger.
Together the two had trapped from the Marias and Milk rivers clear down to South Park in the Colorado country. When beaver was prime. Then years ago Beckwourth had parleyed his dark skin into a place of honor among the Crow tribe as one of their respected warriors. Jim’s father, it was rumored among the trappers of the old west, had been a wealthy Virginia landowner who sired his son by one of his plantation slaves. Rather than owning up to his paternity, Beckwourth’s father had instead granted that son his freedom. After years of homeless wandering, Jim found himself happy among the mountain trappers to whom a man’s color simply didn’t matter.
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