Buck was speaking to an old bearded man who lounged in a straight-back chair pulled up before the fire. The men were oblivious of her as they exchanged greetings. The old man’s face was covered by more than a few days’ growth of stubble—a few years’ growth would be a more accurate description. The beard was gray and long, trailing halfway down his chest. It came to rest just above his protruding abdomen. Above the beard, his cheeks were ruddy, but from heat, cold, or too much liquor, she could not guess.
The old man was dressed much the same as Buck Scott. His clothing was made of hand-sewn leather and wool. He wore worn brown boots instead of moccasins.
“How did everything go, Ted?” Buck asked.
“I don’t know how you do it.” The old man sighed. “Ain’t no wonder you had to get yourself a wife. No way could I dothis night and day. I ain’t had a good stretch of sleep since you rode off.”
“Things were quiet when I left,” Buck said.
“That didn’t last long,” Ted informed him with a grunt.
Annika followed their gaze and nearly gasped aloud when she saw the object of their quiet discussion.
A little girl, a child who looked no older than three and dressed in a creation fashioned from gunnysacks, sat tied to a chair, happily ignoring the men as she proceeded to smash boiled beans on the surface of the table. Her face was covered with beans and her hair, which Annika assumed was blond, was matted with the same substance. Food was everywhere: on the child, the tabletop, the chair, the dirt floor beneath her. Oblivious of the grown-ups, the child played happily, occasionally stuffing a handful of beans into her mouth.
It was the most disgusting thing Annika had ever seen.
Before Annika could react, Buck looked up and noticed her in the doorway.
“Come in and shut the door. You’re letting out the heat.”
At the sound of his voice, Annika started. At the same time, the child looked up from the enamel plate before her. She swept the plate aside and it thudded to the floor. “Buck! Buck!” She started to squeal as she waved her hands about, wildly seeking his attention.
Annika turned to see what Buck would do and found him studying her intently.
“Mama! Mama!” The little girl turned her wide blue eyes on Annika.
Annika glanced around the room waiting for the child’s mother to materialize but no one appeared. Then she noticed the baby was still staring at her with eyes exactly like Buck Scott’s.
“Why is she calling me mama?” Annika whispered to Buck.
“Why is she doing that?” Buck asked Old Ted.
Unconcerned, Ted shrugged. “Baby’s been pesterin’ me since she woke up and found you gone. I had to tell her where you went, so I told her you went to fetch her a mama.”
“Oh my god,” Annika whispered. “So that’s why youasked Alice Soams to marry you? So you could bring her here to raise your child? When were you planning to tell me—her—about this?”
“That’s not my child,” Buck said.
“Ain’t this Alice Soams?” Ted asked, indicating Annika with a wave of his hand.
Buck shook his head. “She says not, but that’s just because she doesn’t want to keep her end of the bargain.”
Annika glared at Buck and then at Ted. “I’m not Alice Soams. This man abducted me from the train and dragged me here against my will—” Her blanket had slipped down around her shoulders. She hiked it up again.
“You agreed to marry me,” Buck interrupted, but he suddenly sounded as tired as Annika felt.
Ignoring him, Annika appealed to Old Ted. “If you’ll take me back to Cheyenne I’ll see that you get paid anything you want. My family has money. Lots of it. They won’t care how much you ask.”
“Would you please come in and shut the door?” Buck’s impatience was evident as he issued the sharp command. He walked over to the table and carefully untied the messy child and miraculously, without getting beans on his hands, set her on the ground. The baby then scuttled under the table where she sat contentedly collecting stray beans and piling them in her lap.
Annika ignored them both and concentrated on Ted. “Will you do it?” She hiked the blanket up from where it had slipped down past her shoulders. Her once-festive hat sat askew, barely clinging to the side of her head.
He shook his head. “No, ma’am. I’m gonna leave you two to argue it out. I ain’t one to take sides in marital disputes.” He dismissed her as he began to gather up his things, a jacket much like Buck’s, a rifle he’d laid on the wide wooden mantel, a hat made of a small, furry animal.
Annika felt hope drain away as exhaustion returned to replace it. She leaned against the doorjamb. Taking a deep, resigned breath, she stepped over the threshold. No sooner did she do so than a small, half-balding rodent ran out from behind a barrel near the hearth. Before she could react with more than a scream, it began hopping toward her on spindlylegs and shaking uncontrollably. She thought she was losing her mind when she heard it bark. She didn’t think rats could bark, but then, she’d never been attacked by a rat before.
Its protruding eyes bulged as it sank its teeth into the toe of her boot. Fortunately for Annika, the animal did little damage before she shook her foot and sent it scuttling away. Annika ran across the room and stopped only when she bumped into the bed, the most substantial piece of furniture in the room. “That thing just bit my boot!” she protested.
Old Ted stomped across the room and scooped the yapping dog up in his arms, kissed it on the lips, let it kiss him, and then tucked it into the front of his buckskin jacket. “What do you expect after you attacked poor little Mouse like that?”
“It attacked me! Besides, that not a mouse, it’s a rat.” Annika shook with anger as she pointed at the offending animal.
Ted looked grievously offended. “Come on, Mouse. We know when we’re not wanted.”
Annika turned to Buck. Her appeal fell on deaf ears. “It bit me,” she whined.
“You set on leaving, Ted?” Buck chose not to deal with either the attack or Annika’s discomfort.
“I’m not staying here. If I get snowed in, no telling how long I’ll be stuck with all of you.’
“Thanks for taking care of Baby for me,” Buck called out as Ted slammed the door behind him.
Buck and Annika stared at each other in uneasy silence until the little girl crawled out from under the table. She toddled over to Annika and stopped a foot away. One sniff told Annika that there was more that needed to be cleaned off the child than beans.
The baby stared at her, one finger in her mouth. With the other hand she patted the mashed beans clinging to her hair.
“Mama?”
Annika sighed, dropped to the edge of the bed, and covered her face with her hands.
“How about making us something to eat?” Buck said.
At the sound of his voice, Annika slowly lowered herhands. She stared down at the dirt floor. Here and there, small bits of grass and pine needles were imbedded in the well-packed earth. She knew he was waiting for her to answer, that he was standing there staring at her as he had done since the moment she stepped inside. Dragging her across the country at a breakneck pace had not been enough. Now, when she was so tired that she thought she might close her eyes and sleep sitting up, he wanted her to make them something to eat.
When she finally looked over at Buck, Annika was glaring. “Are you talking to me?”
“Who do you think I’m talking to?”
Annika glared at the messy baby who had just taken another step toward her. She made no gesture that might encourage the child to come any closer.
Buck glanced at the baby and then at Annika. “You can cook, can’t you? I’m hungry enough to eat a bear.”
When he turned away, dismissing her as he lifted one of the packs that he had just carried in, Annika stood up. The blanket fell away from her and dropped to the bed. She reached out and grabbed the first object she could lay her hands on—a brass candle holder that rested on a rough crate upe
nded beside the bed.
Taking careful aim, Annika drew her arm back and let the candle holder fly.
5
THE candlestick hit him square on the shoulder.
Instinctively, he ducked and swung around, ready for another attack. “What the—” Buck crouched behind the table when a whiskey crock flew past his left temple, hit the wall, and shattered behind him. The odor of white lightning permeated the room.
The woman was in a rage. He watched in fascination as she reached up and tried to jerk her hat off her head. She winced when the huge hat pin yanked her hair before she could untangle it. Tossing the ruined hat aside, Alice marched toward him, brandishing the long, lethal-looking pin.
“Come out from behind there, you coward.” She shoved aside one of the barrels he had fashioned into a chair and started around the corner of the table. Buck held his hands out in front of him.
“Listen here, Alice.”
“Stop it!” she screamed. “I can’t take any more. I’m not Alice. Do you understand?” She leaned close, her face scrunched with anger, her tone threatening as she pointed to herself. “I’m Annika Marieke Storm. I was born in Boston on October seventh, eighteen seventy-one. I don’t know you, I don’t even care to know you, and if you don’t take me back to Cheyenne right now, I’m going to kill you!”
“With a hat pin?” He couldn’t help himself. He started laughing. His reaction obviously did not seem to sit well with her, for she drew back her arm, intent on stabbing him.
Buck reached out and grabbed her wrist. With very littlepressure at all, he squeezed until she opened her hand and dropped the pin. He let her go, then stooped to retrieve the silly weapon before Baby found it and hurt herself.
He stared down at the ornate object in his hand, amazed at how something as simple as a hat pin could tell so much about a person. It was five inches long, topped by a perfectly formed gold butterfly poised in flight. Tiny pearls and small, colorful jewels ornamented the filigree wings. He twirled the pin between his fingers and studied the butterfly a moment longer, as resignation began to replace what had only been a nagging suspicion until now.
He had indeed abducted the wrong woman.
Why else would someone who was apparently so wealthy, not to mention beautiful, have accepted his offer of marriage in the first place? This woman would not have needed train fare, not by the looks of her possessions. He looked up and found her still fuming. She watched him closely, her breasts rising and falling rapidly with every breath. She looked like a wilted hothouse flower with her black cape sodden and limp, the hem swirling about her ankles as it brushed against the dirt floor. The once-rich satin, as dark as midnight, was out of place against the natural furs, wood, and fibers of the crude contents of the cabin.
When he failed to respond to her outburst, as he alternately stared at her and then the hat pin, she lowered her voice, shook her head, and said, “I think you’re a stark raving lunatic.”
He reacted before he could think. The hat pin was forgotten. It fell to the floor as he reached out for her, grasped the edges of her cape in his two brawny hands, and jerked her off her feet. Nose to nose, he glared down into her startled eyes and rasped out in a voice even he did not recognize, “Don’t you ever,ever say that again.” He gave her a vicious shake. “Do you understand?”
Speechless, the woman nodded. Tears quickly flooded her eyes. He reacted to them as if she had slapped him. Then Buck suddenly realized that he was holding her off the ground by a handful of material bunched at her throat. He let her go instantly and stepped back as if touching her had scalded him.
He thought she would react with her usual cutting anger and berate him with her tongue. Instead, she backed away. He was breathing as if he’d tried to run up the face of the mountain. When she quickly put the table between them and scurried away to sit perched on the edge of the bed, he knew he must have scared the hell out of her.
Buck opened his mouth to apologize, then snapped it shut. He’d be damned if he apologized to her. She’d goaded him into his outburst when she voiced his one great fear aloud. Besides, this was the most quiet she’d afforded him in nearly two days and he didn’t want to do anything to set her off again.
I’ll just let her stew awhile, he thought as he bent to retrieve the hat pin and then walked over to set it out of Baby’s reach on the wide mantel above the fireplace.
He glanced over his shoulder and found Baby sitting contentedly in the middle of the floor before the fire, happily playing with the sorry hat Alice had thrown down during her tirade. He couldn’t think of her as anyone but Alice yet, no matter who she might be. A glance in her direction told him he’d scared her into submission, at least for a time, but he didn’t think the respite would last long.
Feeling an intense need to get away from her and her downtrodden expression, Buck pulled up the hood of his coat and crossed the room. He tossed a command over his shoulder, “Keep Baby out of trouble,” and slammed the door behind him.
HANDS clasped together in her lap, Annika stared at the door. Never, not once in her entire life, had any man ever laid a hand on her in anger. Her father and brother were big men, both capable of violence when called upon to fight injustice, but gentle as lambs around her and her mother, or any other woman for that matter. Richard had never even raised his voice to her. Annika sat immobilized on the edge of the huge, hand-hewn log bed and wondered exactly what had set Buck Scott off like a powder keg. After all, she’d been insisting that she was not Alice Soams ever since they first laid eyes on each other. Why had calling him a lunatic suddenly turned him into one?
She stared at the child sitting nearby and watched her repeatedly put the ruined hat on and take it off again. Then the little girl looked up and smiled through bean smears and said, “Mama?”
“I’m not your mama.”
“Pretty?” The baby looked up at her, a mischievous smile on her dimpled face.
Annika tried to ignore her but found it impossible. “Gorgeous.” When she heard the thick sarcasm in her tone, she immediately felt contrite. It was not, after all, the child’s fault her father was a madman: “It’s really pretty, honey. You can have it”
“Keep it?” The child stood up and slowly toddled over to her, seeking approval again. “Pretty?”
Annika stared down at the little girl with the unevenly cut hair that was still adorned here and there with mashed beans, the dirty mouth, and spotted, sackcloth gown. Annika shrugged, but could not help but smile in return. “Real pretty. Pretty as a picture.”
“Got a pitcher!” The child ran to a wooden box that sat against a far wall. She bent far over to the side of the box until her head and shoulders disappeared, her back end up like a duck diving for dinner. A round, tin-backed mirror bit the floor, then a string of glass beads. Finally, Baby pulled out a crumpled piece of paper from a Harper’s Bazaar and ran back to Annika with it.
“Pretty ladies,” the baby said.
Annika held out her hand and accepted the tattered page. She glanced down at an illustration of women’s fashions that had to be a good six years old, older than the child herself.
“That’s very pretty.” She handed it back to the little girl and asked, “What’s your name?”
“Baby.”
Annika frowned. “That’s your name? Baby? Do you have another name?”
Baby shook her head.
Annika persisted. “Is your name Ann? Or Susie?”
Obviously, the child thought her daft, for she laughed with glee. “Baby!”
“My name is Annika.” It felt good to say it aloud. Good to know she had not completely lost her own mind.
“Ankah.”
“Sort of. Try Ah-nee-kah. Can you say that?”
Baby nodded. “Ankah.”
“At least she won’t call me Alice,” Annika whispered to herself.
The door swung open and Baby’s attention was quickly diverted. “Buck! Buck!” she yelled, and ran to hug him about the knees.
Buck Scott, loaded with more goods from the pack mules, looked over at Annika the minute he entered the room.
Just as quickly, she looked away.
She heard him moving about, stacking things here and there, but refused to look at him. Not only was she furious at the way he had treated her, but also she was afraid that he might lose his temper again. If he hit her, there was no way she could protect herself, no way she could stand up to his strength. For once her instinct for self-preservation took precedence over her anger. It was suddenly all too clear that she was alone and helpless, confined to a small cabin where almost anything could happen to her while he held her prisoner.
He wasn’t an easy man to ignore. She heard him ask, “Old Ted give you a bath, Baby?”
As he shrugged out of his coat and hung it on a peg near the door, Annika noticed that the flannel shirt beneath it fit him like a second skin. Without the thick coat he didn’t seem as imposing, but the outline of muscles that bunched beneath the tight shirt did little to calm her nerves.
Baby shook her head no in answer to his query.
“Then you need one, don’t you?” he asked.
“Uh uh.” Baby shook her head.
“Oh, I think you do.”
Annika wondered how he could sound so nonchalant after the intensity of their confrontation. How could he simply refuse to acknowledge her presence? She glanced over at Buck again and found him busy setting a half barrel on the floor before the fireplace. Then he proceeded to fill it from a kettle that was hanging above the fire.
Baby was trying to pull her dress over her head. Annika saw the pitifully tattered underwear the little girl wore, her bare but perfectly shaped little legs, her dancing feet. She watched the two as they chatted. Baby told Buck how she had chased “the Mouse,” which Annika assumed was Ted’s repulsive little dog. Buck told the child he had bought her a surprise in Cheyenne. That nearly put off the bath when Baby demanded he give her the gift immediately. Buck turned it into a bribe by promising to show her only after the bath.
Come Spring Page 7