Forgetting Herself

by Yvonne Jocks

  Not softness like Mariah's, cuddled tightly against him in the confines of their bed, or even the fur of her fool cat, curled between them. This was a softness of noise, of breath, of... air.

  He slid out of bed, and Mariah mumbled sleepy protest. “Whist,” he whispered to her, tucking the blankets up around her. He pulled on his boots and coat, cold enough al right.

  But somehow, the wrappings didn't seem quite so urgent as usual.

  When he stepped outside and listened to the breath of warm, dry wind, he knew why.

  Chinook.

  As if to confirm it, the crust of snow he stood on broke beneath him, and he fell through to his thighs. Then he laughed.

  With the help of the chinook, the thaw was coming fast.

  By the time Mariah woke, Stuart had been out three times, watching snow melt into slush. By the time he came in for lunch, the slush was already turning muddy in places.

  By the time he got home that night, he'd slung his coat over Pooka's saddle. Mariah had banked the fire in the stove and fixed a cold dinner.

  They made love naked for the first time since their wedding night.

  Within days, Mariah hated the mud.

  “How can you hate mud?” challenged Stuart, home for lunch. Letting Dougie herd the flock, he'd spent most of the morning hauling barrels of water in from his parents' well . Despite an earnest effort to clean up, washing his face and hands, he sat across from her otherwise muddy. The first few days it had seemed boyish. And he couldn't help it. His sheep were muddy. His dogs were muddy. His world was muddy. “Some people, aye. But mud?”

  “Because it's everywhere!” she insisted.

  Stuart waited, as if she had more to add. But did she need to? At night, the mud froze—but by midday, it was usual y mud again. Wet, falling snow sometimes blanketed it, and the world would look clean and beautiful again. Then it would melt into more cold, sticky mud.

  Mud dirtied up her once clean floor and benches and even bedclothes. After a single day, she'd given up trying to wash or sweep it away; one trip outside, to let the kitten out or dump the chamber pot, and she might as well have not made the effort. Mud soiled her petticoats and work dresses up to her knees, and this morning it had sucked a shoe right off her foot, stealing buttons in the process. Mariah had knelt in that cold, gluey mud, sifting it through her fingers, and she never did find the last two buttons.

  “It's good for us,” Stuart assured her, too cheerful y. “Mud brings grass.”

  She knew that. Her father was a rancher. But, “At the ranch, we had a mud porch.”

  She hadn't meant to say that, exactly. She'd certainly not meant it as an insult.

  When Stuart snapped, “You're not at the ranch,” it hurt anyway.

  “I'm sorry,” he said, almost immediately. Then, looking down, he took another bite of the same mutton stew she'd been serving for weeks. He didn't sound sorry.

  “I know I'm not at the ranch,” she said, as evenly as she could. “I didn't say I wanted to be.”

  When Stuart looked back up at her, his jaw had set and his brow furrowed in that stubborn way he had. But as he searched her face, both softened into something closer to real contrition.

  “I know, love,” he said solemnly, and left his meal to come around their tiny table, kneel beside her on the muddy floor. More than anything else, his calling her “love” relieved the sudden tension of their near-fight. That, and how carefully he took her hands in his. His were clean. He'd even scrubbed under the fingernails for her. “I'm sorry. I ought not have said that.”

  She knew she wasn't at the ranch. She was too dirty to be at the ranch. She wouldn't ever, ever eat mutton stew at the ranch....

  But neither would she have Stuart. Did anything else matter?

  When he licked his clean thumb and wiped it tenderly across her cheek, and it came away with more mud, Mariah felt her eyes sting. “I'm sorry,” she told him, though she wasn't sure what she was sorry for, except for the horrible sense of... of resentment that had risen so sharply between them, no matter how briefly. “I didn't mean to complain.”

  “Whist,” he murmured, continuing to kneel solidly in front of her, to somehow steady her just by watching her eyes, his own so soft, and brown....

  But not brown like mud.

  “Tel me about the mud porch,” he urged, as if he didn't have work to do.

  “You don't want to know.” But she liked his asking. “Eat your stew before it gets cold.”

  “You're nae cal in' me a liar, are you?” Before they'd married, Stuart only slipped into his parents'

  brogue when he forgot himself. Over the last few months, he increasingly did it on purpose, when he was feeling playful.

  How could she complain about anything, when she not only had Stuart, but a Stuart who loved her so much that he sometimes let her see past his proud self-reliance to his playfulness?

  “What if I did?” she teased back.

  He scowled in mock threat. “I might have to throw you into the mud.”

  “You wouldn't!” She tried to snatch her hands free of his—but not very hard.

  “I assume,” he prompted, “that it's some sort of... porch?”

  “It's a back room, right off the porch,” she explained. "Nobody but guests can use the front door during mud season. We have to come in the back way, and take off their boots, so that not very much mud gets into the rest of the house."

  Stuart's eyes widened. “You're family's so well off, you have an entire room for mud?”

  “It's used for other things,” she protested, laughing. “But not usual y during mud season.”

  “You mean to say, you've been sheltered from the finer qualities of mud, all these years?”

  “Finer qualities!”

  Kissing her hands, he stood. “Take off your shoes and stockings, and I'll show you.”

  When she eyed him suspiciously, he scolded her again, but this time in jest. “I do have to go back to work soon, lass! Surely you can wait until tonight.”

  “Stuart!” She would never ... Yes, she enjoyed it, very much—felt even more warm and excited, now that she understood those feelings, than she had during their trysts. But she was a lady ...

  He smiled his close-mouthed smile at her, brown eyes teasing, and took off his own boots and socks. He rolled up his pants—his legs, she'd discovered early on, were hairy too—and opened the door. “If you mean to let your fine upbringing rob you of one of the joys of springtime, that's your doing,” he warned.

  Almost immediately, Mariah was taking off her own shoes and stockings to fol ow him. When her bare feet sank deep, mud squelching up between her toes, she remembered something.

  She remembered being very small , playing outside her parents' log cabin. She remembered making mud pies with baby Laurel, and carefully drawing lines of “war paint” on her mother's cheeks, and feeling loved—and happy to be final y out of the cabin. Papa, his whiskers still brown, had ridden up on a big, muddy horse. He'd leaned over and scooped her al the way up onto the saddle in front of him, and told her it would be easier for Mother to have more babies than to clean up the ones she had.

  She remembered that her family hadn't always had a mud porch.

  And she still felt loved—and happy to be final y out of the wagon, breathing the spring air.

  “Look,” Stuart urged, pointing toward the mountains. “What do you see?”

  And she saw it—the faintest hint of green on the south slopes.

  “Grass!” she told him, with such enthusiasm that he laughed.

  “Aye, love. And grass means fat, healthy sheep.”

  She held her skirts up to keep them out of the mud as she went to him. When she saw how Stuart started watching her muddy legs, she raised her skirts even higher— over her knees. She loved how wanton she felt, when Stuart's eyes got dark like that just by looking at her.

  “And fat, healthy sheep mean wool, and mutton,” she guessed.

  “And wool and mutton mean mon
ey,” he agreed, his voice rough.

  She reached him, wrapped her arms up around his shoulders, tipped her face up to his in

  invitation. “And money means my husband can put in the windmill he's been telling me about.”

  “And perhaps build you a proper house,” he added.

  “I have a proper house. Perhaps he can purchase his own ram....”

  “Mrs. MacCallum!” He narrowed his eyes in shocked amusement. “I thought I'd married myself a lady!”

  Ladies, of course, did not speak of rams and breeding any more than of bulls.

  Not outside of bed, anyway. And in full daylight. And in the mud!

  But Mariah had the hardest time remembering to be a lady, when she had her arms around Stuart.

  Perhaps he'd been right. Perhaps she did not want to wait until tonight.

  Not that she would say so. Not directly.

  Well , not outside of bed.

  But... as dark as Stuart's eyes were getting, she suspected he understood—and even approved.

  Maybe too much. Kissing each other again, they sank to their knees in the mud. When she raised a hand to Stuart's face, and he pressed his cheek into it—

  He also pressed his cheek into an unintentional handful of mud.

  “Oh ... !” she whispered, trying not to laugh.

  His eyes narrowed with true warning, now—and she could not possibly get away, bogged down as she was. As Stuart leaned menacingly toward her, she leaned farther back. Then she fell , and he caught her as she did, and they lay together, laughing, in the cold, wet, gluey mud.

  But oh, he did have a knack for warming her up. With their mouths already open to laugh, they began to kiss. Stuart's strong arms kept Mariah from sinking further despite the weight of him. The gooey stuff glurped into her hair, slid between her fingers as she held to Stuart's shoulders—as she exalted in his kisses, his hard body over hers—and she thought perhaps she could get to like mud after all ...

  Which was when they heard the gunfire.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  The rifle shots—two, at first—came from the direction of the flock.

  Stuart pulled Mariah to her feet, out of their muddy playground, and said, “Get my rifle.”

  A third shot cracked across the range. Mariah scrambled to do as she'd been told. While Stuart hurried over to his da's team, another two deliberate shots echoed across the wet range.

  Saddle horses being unnecessary for hauling water, Stuart had left Pooka with Dougie. But he'd already unhitched his da's borrowed team from the buckboard before taking lunch. Now he

  managed to fashion a quick rope bridle despite his slimy hands. He'd mounted Jug-head, bareback, by the time Mariah returned with his Winchester and his hat.

  “Stuart... ?” she said, not as if she truly had a question to ask. More as if she wanted to beg him to stay there with her, or wanted him to tel her everything would be all right.

  But sometimes things weren't all right. Stuart took his things. “Stay here,” he told her.

  She nodded. For the briefest moment as he stared down at Mariah—muddy and worried and

  more beautiful than anything he'd ever known—Stuart considered not leaving her.

  For his flock?

  For his brother?!

  Angry at the hesitation, he rode away, wishing he had spurs on his muddy heels.

  The draft horse made good time, especial y once they got to the rockier part of the range, beyond Stuart's claim, where snow still packed to the north side of boulders and deep in cuts. After pulling a loaded wagon through the mire, this was easy work for the great beast.

  The crack of several more rapid shots made the ride less easy for Stuart than his horse.

  By the time he could see the flock, he knew this was no mere rifle practice. This was real trouble.

  The sheep were milling, knotting up in a senseless panic. The dogs were excited, instinctively trying to herd but without clear direction as to where; a dangerous situation. Stuart heard another shot from the direction of the gulch, then another, then another. These weren't deliberate, like the first few. These were fast and angry.

  Douglas, he thought, relieved to recognize his younger brother's temper in those shots. The fool was emptying his rifle after someone....

  Riding closer, Stuart even caught sight of his brother, on Pooka, in the distance.

  He also saw the fallen sheep that had so enraged the boy.

  Three were clearly dead, two of them head-shot. One more writhed on the ground, struggling weakly for life. Red blood stained muddy gray fleece.

  Fighting back fear and rage both, in favor of desperate reason, Stuart first whistled some basic commands to the dogs— hold them; don't go anywhere— then dismounted and went to the

  struggling wether. The animal, shot in the flank, kept trying dumbly to get back up. Stuart lay his rifle on the rockiest, driest piece of ground in reach, thumbed off his suspenders and pulled his too-muddy shirt up over his head. He pressed it to where blood still oozed from the bullet hole.

  The wether—one of last year's lambs, to tel by the earmark—floundered under Stuart's hand. Its dark eyes didn't understand what had happened to it.

  To the southwest, in a final staccato of shots, Dougie emptied his rifle.

  Still pressing on the wether's wound, hoping to slow the bleeding, Stuart looked toward the other fallen sheep. Al three were ewes; two of them ready to lamb in only a few more weeks.

  Ready to lamb...

  Heavy hoofbeats—not from the gulch, but from the direction of the wagon—caught his attention, and he saw Mariah riding up on the other of Da's draft horses.

  For a moment, he stared. He 'd told her to stay behind!

  But he also needed her.

  “Mariah!” he yelled, and she hurried to his side, slid off the horse's bare back. He showed her what he was doing. “Hold this down. Tight.”

  She did, her hands sliding over his as they changed places, and Stuart scrambled over to the nearest dead ewe, felt her roundness with expert hands. Nothing.

  He moved to the next—and felt faint movement.

  He pulled out his knife, even as he heard Dougie riding back on Pooka. Ignoring his brother, Stuart quickly sliced open the dead ewe's stomach and removed the bloody lamb, still in its slimy sac. He cut the cord that would no longer nurture it, noticed how its movements were slowing. He had nothing left to rub it with but his cotton sleeve—long Johns didn't come off so easily—but used that over his hand to clear its face of the sac as he stumbled back to Mariah.

  He breathed once into the lamb's nose and mouth before kneeling beside his wife. "I need part of that shirt, love."

  “Stuart!” exclaimed Dougie, dismounting at their side, rifle still in hand. “I think it was Johnson! He was shooting from behind some boulders, across the deadline!”

  Tearing a piece off his muddy shirt, careful not to dislodge Mariah's hands as she fought the strength of the struggling wether, Stuart said, “Give me your shirt, Douglas.”

  As his brother unbuttoned the top of his comparatively clean shirt, then pulled it up over his head, Stuart did his best to clear the birth sack off the lamb, then breathed into its nose and mouth again. To his relief, it took a breath. Its black eyes winced open, and it wriggled again.

  “We didn't even know he was there, until he started shooting!” Dougie continued, modestly stepping out of Mariah's line of sight as he handed his shirt to Stuart. "Then I pulled out the Winchester and started firing back. I think I scared him off!"

  Stuart took the offered shirt and began to rub the lamb briskly with practiced hands, managing to dry it some. It struggled more weakly than the wether beside it. Mariah was having a hard time keeping pressure on the older sheep's wound, the way it flailed under her.

  “Douglas,” said Stuart, less concerned than he might once be about his brother's underwear, “help Mariah. Lass, as soon as he—yes,” he continued, as Dougie, still raring to continue his tale, pressed his
hands over the muddy bandage. “Here,” he offered, and handed over both the lamb and the shirt to his wife. “Likely it won't survive, but if it has any hope, it must be kept warm. Beg pardon ...,” he added, starting to unbutton her dress bodice just as deftly, before he'd even fully thought it out, much less asked permission. She quickly turned away from Dougie. “There,” he

  said, turning the damp, kicking lamb against her thinner camisole, leaving smears of blood and grime on the delicate material, on her even more delicate skin, before pulling her dress bodice futilely around it. "Hold it tight against you while you take it back to the wagon. Keep rubbing it, even once it's dry. If we've any milk, mix it with molasses and water to feed it. Can you do that for me?"

  “Of course I can do that!” For a blessed moment, the rage still fighting for his attention eased.

  There she stood, filthy, bedraggled, and half-dressed, flinching from neither the immodesty nor the horror of the afternoon and taking orders as if he could ask anything of her at al .

  That possibility frightened him in total y different ways than everything else.

  “Have you got a needle on you?” he asked, instead of kissing her.

  “It's ... here ...”

  Stuart held the lamb to her front for her while she produced a sewing needle from her cuff. Then Stuart did kiss her.

  “Thank you, love.” Then he turned back to Dougie, wiped off his knife, and set about trying to get the bullet out of the wounded sheep. He heard Mariah riding away; knew that somehow,

  unassisted, she'd mounted a great draft horse with a newborn lamb in her arms.

  How he'd won her, he might never be sure.

  “I went after him, of course,” Dougie continued, using his full weight to hold the wether stil while Stuart worked. "I would have chased him no matter how far he went—maybe back to whoever hired him!— except for the gulch. It's flooded almost to its banks, Stu! It would be death to cross it. Not that I didn't think of trying."

  “Not on my horse, I hope,” muttered Stuart, concentrating on his bloody task. He used his finger to probe the wound for the bullet. He didn't know if he was helping— but he had to try.