She walked over and reached out to touch the fine silks and satins hanging side by side in rainbow hues. They had been purchased by a girl with nothing more to worry about than what she should wear, not a woman whose heart was torn by indecision and longing. Two months had passed since she’d had her grand possessions with her and in that time she realized she didn’t really need any of them. The coat Buck had labored over hung amid the gowns, the contrast one that only called to mind the differences between Buck and her. As she let her hand fall away from the striped gown she was fingering, she knew she would give all of it away if she could only see him again.
As she stood before the mirror and pulled up the lace-edged collar of her silk robe, she wondered what Buck would say if he could see her now. He would probably shake his head and tell her that he knew he was right, that she needed a life of comfort more than she needed him. She ran her fingers through her hair to untangle it, then absentmindedly picked up her ivory comb and began to work it through the wet strands.
She studied herself in the mirror. Did the change in her show? Could anyone tell she had given her virginity to the man who had carried her away? Would they understand if she told them that she was no longer the sheltered girl who thought she knew all there was to know of the world and of her place in it? That she had been given a glimpse of a life she might have never even imagined, nor would she have wanted to, but that now she was considering embracing that life and the man who went with it?
The sound of Buttons’s laughter drifted up the stairs. Annika smiled when she heard it. She wondered what Buck would say when he saw the child dressed in the finery Rose ordered for her. Zach had returned to Busted Heel with a list of things to have sent out for Buttons to wear and Rose had made him promise to bring them back by tomorrow. For now Rose had chosen one of her own soft blouses and had cut it down into a long, nightshirt affair tied with a wide pink ribbon sash. Buttons agreed to wear it while her satin dress and the one ragged one Annika packed were drying.
Annika’s old chocolate wool suit lay in a heap by the door. There was nothing to salvage of it, and so she planned to throw it away. Still, when she looked at the suit, she couldn’t help but be reminded of all that had passed in the last two months. Despite the hardship, the confusion, and doubt, her days at Blue Creek had been some of the best of her life.
She walked over to the window to watch the sun slip behind the mountains and wondered if Buck was out there somewhere watching the sunset, too. Hopefully, darkness would spur him on.
20
IT was his worst hallucination yet.
The thing stood on Buck’s chest. The size of a rat, it had moist, bulging eyes that shifted nervously from behind a short snout of a nose that emitted snorting noises. Uneven black whiskers sprouted out on either side of the snout. Spindly matchstick legs looked about to collapse under the half-bald, bedraggled fur body that shook with unceasing tremors. The creature opened its mouth, emitting the horrid scent of dog breath and licked him across the lips.
Buck grimaced and turned his face away, trying to escape the slimy wet tongue. “Get off me, Mouse.” He tried to bat the Chihuahua away, but barely had the strength to raise his arm.
He heard a shuffling sound and turned his head in time to see Old Ted approach the bed. The man reached down, scooped up the little dog, and shoved it inside his jacket. “’Bout time you woke up.”
“I’m not dead?”
“Not unless the dead started talkin’ and I ain’t heard about it, you ain’t. You look like you been to hell and back, though.”
There was coffee boiling, the scent mingling with one he couldn’t quite place. He tried to raise his head, but fell back against the pillow. “I can’t seem to move.”
“Fever drained you of your strength. I got some vittles ready, if you feel like eatin’. Can ya sit up, or do I have to pull you up?”
Buck tried, then admitted defeat. “I need help.”
Grudgingly, Old Ted bent over him, grunting and groaning until he’d dragged Buck’s big body into a sitting position. He straightened the pillow and then stepped back. “What’da ya want?”
“What have you got?”
“Smoked elk, biscuits, gravy, coffee.”
“A biscuit and coffee.”
Old Ted shuffled back to the table and picked up a plate. He put a biscuit on it, poured a cup of coffee, and set it alongside the bread, and then carried it to Buck. “You’re lucky I came along.”
From the mess scattered around the room, Buck knew Ted had been there more than just a few hours. “How long have I been out?”
“I been here a week. I figure you’d been out a good day or two before I came along. One of your mules had wandered in here lookin’ for a meal.”
“That explains the smell.”
“I tried to clean it up,” Ted admitted.
Buck bit into the biscuit and then slowly took a sip of his coffee. His leg was still throbbing. He didn’t know whether to take it as a good sign or not. At least it hadn’t gone numb, but he was afraid to pull aside the blanket and find it gone black with gangrene.
“What happened?” Ted wanted to know.
“Cat. Mountain lion. I downed a deer and the cat wanted a piece. I was in the way.”
Ted cleared his throat and looked everywhere but at Buck. “So where’s the kid?”
It hadn’t hurt because he refused to call her to mind, but now the pain of losing both Baby and Annika ripped through him harder than the mountain lion’s claws. “Gone. The woman took her down the mountain.”
“You let her?”
“I told her to go,” Buck said. Ted didn’t need to know that Annika had left him, crawled away after taking his heart and crushing it as easily as a man crushed a gnat in summer.
“You did?” Ted leaned forward, his ruddy cheeks bobbing. He smoothed his hair flat across his forehead, which was wrinkled in thought.
“More coffee.” Buck held out his cup, hoping to shut the man up. When Ted left to fill it, Buck tried to change the subject. “Fever, huh?”
“You had it bad. Were out of your head when I walked in.” He handed Buck the cup again. “I cleaned out your leg as best as I could and packed it with bread, but it’s still seepin’ under the bandage.”
“Infected?” Buck realized with all-too-certain clarity that he really didn’t care if his leg were infected or not. He didn’t really care about anything at all.
Old Ted shook his head. “I been keepin’ it clean, but it needs sewin’.”
“Why didn’t you do it?”
Ted shrugged. “Hands ain’t steady as they used to be.”
Buck set the plate and cup down on the crate beside the bed and then lifted the cover back. He was still in his filthy underwear, but Ted had cut the left leg of the long johns off and had bound the wound with strips of cloth.
“Take it off.”
Ted slowly removed the bandage and the packing.
All things considered, Buck thought, it didn’t look too bad. The lips of the wound were jagged and raw. The middle of the deep slash seeped a watery red but there was no yellow infection present. As he leaned over the wound, Buck felt his head spin. He sat up and shook his head, then closed his eyes. “Get me the cigar box in the chest at the foot of the bed. I’ll sew it up.”
Ted got the box and set it in Buck’s lap. Then he went over to the table and picked up his whiskey crock. He poured a liberal amount in Buck’s coffee cup and held it out to him.
“I’m not drinking that until I’m done sewing,” Buck said shortly.
Ted downed the whiskey himself. “Well, I’m not watchin’ without a drink.”
Buck threaded the needle with the same black thread he’d used on Annika’s face. Don’t think about her. He bent over his own leg and before he could stop to think of the pain he was about to inflict upon himself, he pushed the needle through his flesh.
Ted walked to the other side of the room and sat down.
Sweat beaded ac
ross Buck’s forehead and upper lip as he slowly, steadily sewed up his wound. By the time his thigh was pieced back together, he was as near to fainting as a man can get without actually keeling over. He cut the last stitch with the scissors and then, hands shaking, set the box aside.
“I’ll take that whiskey now.” His voice was weak.
“Here.” Ted already had one poured for him. He pulled up a chair and sat down. He began rubbing the ears of the little dog that peered nervously at Buck from inside his master’s jacket. “You want to talk about it?”
“About what?” Buck hoped his forbidding expression would shut Ted up. But it didn’t.
“’Bout the woman leaving. Takin’ the kid.”
“Nothing to tell.”
“I saw a lot of tracks outside the cabin when I got here. Hard to hide anything in tore-up muddy ground.”
“I said—”
“You said she went down the mountain. I asked how.”
“Her being here was a mistake. She left when the thaw came, that’s all. I was out hunting.”
“Hmmm.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Nothin’: Just hmmm.” Ted swilled more whiskey. “She didn’t leave alone.”
Buck stared at him, the cup arrested halfway to his lips. “What are you gettin’ at, old man?”
“You sure she wanted to leave?”
“You saw her that first day. She sure as hell didn’t want to stay, did she?”
“That was then. This is now. You mean to tell me nothin’ happened to change her mind while she was here? You ain’t exactly the unpersuasive type.”
“Nothing happened,” Buck grunted. He ran his hand over the lower half of his face and felt a week’s worth of beard. Good. He would never shave again. Not for her. Not for anyone. He’d let his beard grow long as Ted’s, let it go until it hung down to—
“Who you suppose took her back?”
“I don’t know. Most likely her brother.”
“She really had a brother then? I should have taken her up on her offer to take her back that first day.”
“Her brother’s Kase Storm. Ever heard of him?”
Old Ted scratched his nose and then he scratched the Mouse behind the ears. “He ain’t that marshal that wiped out most of the Dawsons, is he?”
“The same.”
“Hell, good thing you were out huntin’ when he got here.”
“Yeah.” Buck tried not to imagine Annika’s joy when her brother rode up to the cabin. Had she flung herself in his arms and poured out the story of her misery? Had she told him how she had duped the big fool who kidnapped her into thinking she loved him? Had she shrugged off Baby as a burden she only had to bear until they could drop her off somewhere in Cheyenne?
He closed his eyes and leaned back against the wall.
“More?”
Buck opened one eye and peered at Ted, who was holding out the whiskey crock. “Why not?” He held out his cup.
He was too weak to walk. What would it hurt if he got stinking pie-eyed? The worst that might happen would be that he would fall out of bed.
The best thing that would happen would be that he wouldn’t wake up at all.
“I’ll be goin’ down into Cheyenne as soon as you’re up and around. Want me to take your winter haul down and sell it for you?” Ted offered.
If he let the old man go down and conduct his business for him, then Buck wouldn’t have to chance hearing about Annika. Her rescue was still bound to be all the talk in the saloons. If he waited long enough before he went back to Cheyenne, the story would die down.
“Sure. Why not? You plan on comin’ back through this way?’
“If I take your load down I will. I’ll bring back your money and word of the girl.”
Buck turned on Ted, his hand clamped around the cup, his jaw working furiously. “I don’t want to hear about her. I don’t want to know what happened to her or Baby. Never.”
“Never’s a long time.”
“Shut up, old man.”
Setting the whiskey crock on the crate beside Buck, Ted stroked his beard and shook his head. But he said nothing. He turned away from the sight of Buck sprawled in the bed in his underwear, one leg hanging out exposed, the jagged black stitches running from just above his knee to well up his thigh.
“Where you going?” Buck frowned as the old man walked toward the door.
“For a walk. I’ll be back when you’re not in such a piss-poor mood.”
THE expansive corral held twenty-two buffalo all marked with the Buffalo Mountain brand. Dressed in a simple shirtwaist and navy skirt that flared prettily about the ankles of her matching blue boots, Annika stood on the lowest rail of the fence with her arms hooked around the highest and watched the massive animals amble about. Most of them seemed content to stand staring at the ground or lie on then-sides contemplating the flies that buzzed around them. She tried to imagine them roaming free, the way Kase had told her they once had, moving in wave after wave, a shaggy brown mass rolling across the prairie, cutting down everything in its path. He told her how the earth used to shake when the herds ran free.
The two bulls in the corral scared her just to look at them. Their horns were sharp, curved upward above huge, woolly black heads. Behind the head was a sloped hump of faded brown. Their hides were shedding, huge patches of fur had fallen out or had been rubbed out as they wallowed in the mud holes on the ground.
“There’s something mysterious about them, isn’t there? Can you feel it, or are you just biding your time out here until Buttons wakes up?”
She started when she heard her brother’s voice so near her elbow. Kase always had moved lithely for so large a man. When they were younger, she was always accusing him of sneaking up on her. Brushing her windblown hair back off her face, she smiled as he leaned against the fence beside her.
“They make me feel peaceful somehow. I can’t imagine why, unless it’s because of the way they just stand there. It almost seems as if they’re just waiting for something to happen.”
When he spoke, Kase’s voice was sad. “They are waiting for things to be the way they used to. They’re waiting to run free across the plains with their brothers who will never return. They’re waiting to be hunted by the Sioux who will never ride to the hunt again.”
“How do you know?”
“I feel it. Don’t you?”
She shook her head. “I’m not sure.”
“Someday maybe you will. Do you realize the plains people lived on nothing but the buffalo? They were independent of the white men as long as the buffalo roamed the land. Tipis and robes came from the hide, glue from the hooves, thread from the sinews, knives from the ribs. The paunch provided water bags.”
Annika watched a cow move across the corral. “Where did you find them?”
“It wasn’t easy. We rounded them up one at a time, sometimes two. They were wandering strays, barely existing. It took two years to find nineteen. The young-looking ones were born here.”
“What will you do with them?”
Kase looked off toward the mountains. “Keep them. Feed them and care for them so that my children will know what a buffalo is, so that their children’s children will know.” He turned to her, stared down into her eyes as if he could see into her soul, and said, “Men like the one that took you captive nearly wiped them off the face of the earth.”
She swallowed. “Maybe they didn’t know. Maybe they thought there would always be enough.”
Kase shook his head. “They knew. The men that paid them knew. When the buffalo were gone, the Indian would be gone as well. It was a grand scheme.”
“Surely not,” she protested.
He looked at his sister, at her fair hair and features so like their mother’s. It was not her fault. She didn’t know, couldn’t feel what he felt He had always known he was Indian, in his blood and his heart Annika was more white than Indian. Perhaps she would never feel the things he felt He thanked God she had never
faced the prejudice he had known but had slowly learned to live with, just as Caleb Storm had.
“How long will you keep the child here?” He changed the subject abruptly to catch her off guard. His ploy worked. He watched her face blanch, saw pain behind her eyes before she looked away.
Annika fingered the wooden rail and then gnawed on her thumbnail. She shrugged. “A month ago, I thought Buck would be coming after her. Now I’m not so sure.”
“Buck? You say his name so reverently.”
She turned to him again. “No I don’t.”
He ignored her protest. “I’m worried about you, Annika. You don’t eat, you spend all day working in the house for Rose.”
“Aren’t you glad? She can barely move now that the baby’s almost here. I’m trying to do as much as I can for her, Kase.”
“That’s what worries me. It’s just not like you.”
“Thank you so much, brother.”
He pulled his hat down low over his eyes until they were shadowed. “The little sister I left in Boston was only concerned with her social affairs and wearing the latest styles. You would never have so much as boiled water for your own tea at home—”
“That’s not fair, Kase. I never had to work at home. Here, it’s different, and now I’m doing it to help out Rose.”
He turned on her then, scowling down at her to hide his deep concern. “No, you’re different. That man hurt you more than you’ll admit, but I can wait to find out just how much, Annika. I have to wait until Rose has the baby, and I have to wait until you’re ready to tell me all about it, but I’m a patient man now. More than I ever was before. I’ll wait.”
She watched him walk across the dusty ground toward the barn that stood between the house and the buffalo pen. When he disappeared inside, she turned back to the fence, tempted to lay her head on her arms and cry. Instead, she straightened her shoulders, took a deep breath, and tried to think things through.
Come Spring Page 29