Then suddenly both wife and son were dead, and it was as if every light in the world had gone out. He felt cast loose, his anchor lost, but whenever he might think to embrace the comforting blackness with welcoming arms, Eliza would not let him die. Her existence tied him to an older brother who was everything he wasn’t, to a time before those brief years when Sarah brought the warmth of love and happiness into his bleak life. It was hard not to hate Eliza, to blame her for still being alive, for forcing him to go on living a life that every day became a more onerous burden. She was all he had in the world, but she was a bitter exchange for what he had lost.
Chapter 4
A heavy thunderstorm struck during the night. Awakened by an ear-splitting crash of thunder, Eliza found the roof leaking and puddles of water forming on the dirt floor. Repressing a strong desire to pull the covers over her head and ignore the whole thing until morning, she stepped gingerly across the cold ground and peeped into the main room. The fire had gone out and the room was in pitch-black darkness, but she could hear the unmistakable plop of dripping water. She moved in the direction of her uncle’s muted snores and bumped into the table. The snoring ended with a guttural snort, but they resumed their even rhythm as she massaged her throbbing side; her uncle had gone to sleep on the table and was completely dry. She stumbled back to her room and climbed between the damp sheets. For one who could remember nights in the rain with only the wagon for cover, she was comfortable enough, but unfortunately wide awake.
Her mind wandered, browsing through her past. She recalled the warm comfort of her Aunt Sarah’s presence and the laughter of the little boy her uncle worshipped. She would never forget that bright summer day when they were both laid under the Kansas sod. Overnight she had been catapulted from irresponsible childhood into the assumption of her aunt’s duties. With wrenching suddenness life had become difficult and unhappy. She was not a selfish girl or one given to expecting special attention, but she found it more and more difficult to accept her uncle’s harsh treatment and disregard for all that she did. There was something stirring within her, a restlessness that made her peevish and impatient, suddenly unhappy with things she’d previously accepted without question. On several occasions recently she’d had to bite her tongue to keep from talking back, but she had never stood up to her uncle and she doubted she ever would.
The image of Cord Stedman rose up unbidden to tempt her mind from the blighting hopelessness of her life. She tried to push it aside, but it wouldn’t go. No man had ever disturbed her virginal thoughts, and to discover one had taken up abode there, not to be dislodged, was bewildering. She ought to be afraid of him, but even as she had snatched her hand away from him that morning at the creek, she’d realized she was drawn to him instead of fearing him, and that had made her feel guilty.
She thought of his powerful chest and arms, only partly hidden by the sheepskin jacket, and a tremor of excitement coursed through her. How could anyone so big and powerful not be dangerous? Even now those sultry eyes, screened under craggy brows that acted like a protective barrier against intrusion, agitated her peace. The outline of his heavy beard on smooth-shaven, tanned, and weathered skin only served to heighten the impression he was outside the limitations that fettered and confined more ordinary mortals.
Yet she sensed that behind his cold, efficient exterior there burned a fire of unfathomed magnitude. She could feel its heat escaping through those hypnotic eyes. She stirred in bed, pulling the sheet over her breasts as a shield against the intense, compressed energy of that man. She wondered if he was always so untouched by ordinary human emotions, or if his feelings were merely buried out of sight of others. He was so much bigger than life, the kind of man she read about in her mother’s books, it was difficult to imagine him doing the ordinary things other men did. Still, it was this unapproach-ability that made his kindness all the more unexpected and inexplicable. She wondered if he really would pay that awful bill, but immediately felt ashamed of herself. She knew he would. Cord Stedman would never go back on his word.
She tried to imagine what he was really like, but her experience of men was so limited she was forced to fall back on the fictional heroes in her books. Bit by bit she began to weave a fantastic and exotic past centered around his hooded eyes and hard mouth. She fabricated tales of daring adventure and improbable peril—to her astonishment she found herself the heroine of each episode—and imagined him vanquishing opposition and scattering foes with the ease of a giant among pygmies. Enmeshed in these pleasurable fantasies she drifted off to sleep, a tiny smile on her lips and her dimpled cheek resting on clasped hands.
Ira left for town next morning after breakfast. He promised to fix the roof if he got the chance, but Eliza was to see to the floor before he got back. She cleared away the breakfast things, fed the stock and turned them out, and then directed her full attention to making the cabin fit to live in; she didn’t hear the bellows of her milk cow until they became a cry of distress.
Following the mournful sound to a hollow that ran behind the cabin, Eliza found the cow mired up to her shoulders in a small lake of muddy water. A shallow basin, lying directly in the path of the runoff from last night’s downpour, had filled up during the night and turned the sand-mud mixture into a sticky bog. The poor creature was exhausted by her struggles and could only bellow helplessly.
Eliza had no idea how to free such a large animal from a quagmire, but she knew the cow would drown if something were not done soon. She kicked off her shoes, hitched up her skirt, and waded into the icy water, but she was speedily persuaded the ooze would imprison her just as firmly as it had her cow if she dared go any farther. She fetched her uncle’s extra length of rope from the wagon, but fifteen minutes later she still hadn’t succeeded in tossing the lasso over the creature’s head.
“You deserve to drown, you stupid beast,” she scolded in angry frustration. “Why did you have to go in so far?”
The sound of horses hooves caused Eliza to turn around in alarm, but her flight was arrested by the sight of a tall, proud man astride a black gelding. Without knowing where she got the courage, Eliza ran toward the road calling and waving her arms to attract the attention of the owner of the Matador.
Cord had no way of knowing Eliza’s uncle had settled into the abandoned cabin along his route into town—he would have dismissed it as immaterial if he did know—but there was an element of youthful impulsiveness in his response to her call. Sturgis and Royce were left behind when he kicked his steed into a gallop, and with a Surry of lashing reins and raking spurs, they rushed to catch up, realizing only when it was too late to draw back that they were being summoned by the same female they’d tried to run off Bear Creek. Royce nearly swallowed his tongue; Sturgis wished he’d thought to complain of a bellyache after breakfast.
“My cow will drown if you don’t get her out,” Eliza called, too excited to realize her words didn’t make sense.
“Where is she?” Cord asked, dismounting with unhurried movements.
“Behind the house. The rain must have flooded it during the night. It wasn’t there yesterday.” Cord never once asked what it was.
“How long has she been stuck?”
“I don’t know. I was inside and didn’t hear her. I tried to get her out, but it’s too soft to wade in, and I couldn’t get a rope over her head.”
“I expect the boys will have to dig her out.”
“But the water’s freezing.”
“I know. We have to dig our cows out all the time. They’re never satisfied unless they’re up to their knees in water.”
If the boys had had any attention to spare they would have been surprised at Cord’s talkativeness, but they were too numb to notice anything more subtle than a thunderclap. Each had put on his best clothes—Sturgis had astonished his friends by washing his neck and face—only to be told they had to wade chest-high into an outsized mud hole. After yesterday’s misadventure, this was a nearly mortal blow to their youthful vanity.
The exhausting work of diving under the water to dig out each hoof fell to Royce. The frigid water quickly depleted his strength, and as he had nowhere to rest and replenish his oxygen, Sturgis would hold his gasping and sputtering friend atop the cow until he had recovered enough to dive once again. Suddenly the wretched bovine set up a pathetic mooing, a signal she had given herself up for lost. She refused to make any effort to free herself, and even after her feet were released from the mud and she began to float, she merely lay there rolling her eyes, flopped over on her side like a hot-air balloon. Sturgis tried to stir her interest by twisting her tail.
“Pull, for God’s sake,” yelled Royce, holding the cow’s head out of the water, but the uncooperative beast spun completely around, and the boys had to push instead. A tiny choke escaped Eliza.
“I’ll put a rope on her,” Cord called. He measured out a couple of lengths and after a few practiced twirls, sent it sailing through the air to settle easily over the unresisting animal’s head. Sturgis tightened the noose around her horns, and at Cord’s signal, his gelding began to pull the waterlogged animal to shore. She lay perfectly still, resigned to a fate that no longer awaited her, until she felt herself scrape bottom; then she recovered her will to live with a vengeance. As Sturgis and Royce approached the shore in her wake, she gauged the distance to an inch and chased them both back into the water as far as the rope would allow.
“I don’t think she likes your red handkerchief,” Cord hollered to Sturgis with the barest hint of a smile. That must have been the case, for the cow kept her baleful eye so firmly fixed on Sturgis, Royce was able to deploy around and wade to shore. “Do you hobble her?” Cord asked, mounting his horse.
“N-no,” Eliza answered with shaking voice. “S-she g-grazes where she c-can.” Cord took her a few hundred yards away and joggled the rope off her horns. Free again, the ungrateful beast trotted away, shaking her head at the men who had rescued her.
“You’ll never be able to go into town looking like that,” Cord said when he got a look at the bedraggled pair.
“I can wash out your clothes,” Eliza offered. “You can wait in the house until they’re dry.”
Sturgis and Royce vacillated, torn between common sense and a desire to put as much distance as possible between themselves and this disastrous female.
Thanks for the offer, Miss Smallwood,” Cord said, amusement dancing in his eyes, “but it seems they have a mind to walk back.” However, it was impossible to trudge twelve miles in their boots, dripping mud and water the whole way, so the boys moved off toward the cabin, dejection showing in every line of their bodies.
Eliza burst out laughing the minute the cabin door closed behind them. It was the one who twisted her tail like a windup toy, like she would moo and give milk.”
“She wasn’t much help, Cord commented, his eyes crinkling in merriment.
“Then she floated like she was already dead,” Eliza wailed helplessly.
A handful of muddy clothes sailed through a narrowly opened door and landed on the porch with a wet plop; suddenly Eliza became aware of Cord’s nearness, and a tightening in her chest put an end to her laughter.
“You really don’t have to wash those clothes.”
“It’s the least I can do after my cow behaved so badly. They did look so nice.” She felt the need to be doing something, and she hurried to gather up the muddy garments.
Minutes later Eliza had the clothes in hot soapy water, but her sense of ease had vanished. She had washed her uncle’s clothes for years, but she no sooner pulled a pair of underwear out of the tub than she was badly jolted by the reality of the boys’ physical presence. Theirs was not an impersonal male body she had known since birth, they were strangers, young and virile, and they were in her cabin stark naked! The clothes seemed to burn her fingers, and she hurried to hang them up, hoping Cord wouldn’t notice her shaking hands.
Eliza wasn’t fearful of Cord, but she was conscious of him in a way that was wholly different from her awareness of any man before, and she found this far more unsettling than ordinary fear. She could understand her uneasiness around the boys, but she couldn’t even begin to unravel the inchoate mass of feelings about Cord that was turning her brain to mush. It was as though she was being lured onward by something that shocked and fascinated her at the same time.
Never before had she been so vitally aware of a man s physical presence, nor could she remember feeling this tug of physical attraction. Now the sheer power of it literally took her breath away. She felt helplessly caught in the toils of something she didn’t understand but which exercised an irresistible attraction over her.
Cord eased the situation by carrying water to the house for the boys’ bath, but once the clothes were hung up and the last of the dirty water dumped into the ditch, Eliza couldn’t avoid his nearness.
“You know, I still don’t know your name.”
“It’s Elizabeth Smallwood,” she replied blushing, “but I’m never called anything but Eliza.”
Eliza timorously raised her eyes from the ground. He certainly was handsome. She didn’t know that she’d thought about it before, but there was no doubt in her mind Cord was her ideal. He was big and powerful, and she felt sure he could protect a girl if he wanted to, yet there was something about him that was vulnerable, something that made her feel he was not quite unapproachable. He was looking rather stern just now, but somehow that drew her to him rather than scared her away.
“Miss Smallwood, those clothes will take some time to dry,” he said with slightly stiff formality, “and I’ve got business in town. Will you tell the boys to join me when they’re dressed.”
“No!” Eliza cried, plummeting from of her daydream with the suddenness of a child tumbling down a haystack. “They can’t stay … I mean, not by themselves … my uncle would be so angry,” she sputtered in a welter of half sentences.
“They won’t bother you again,” he assured her, puzzled by the alarm in her voice.
“You can’t leave them here.”
“But they’re only boys.”
“I couldn’t take … I mean, how will they get … they’re naked,” she finally managed to say, gesturing helplessly toward the clothes on the line. Cord smiled.
“I have a better idea. Why don’t you come with me and meet your uncle in town.”
“That would be even worse!” Now he really didn’t understand.
“Then we’ll wait under this tree,” he said, and led Eliza to a bench built around the trunk of a large cottonwood. Settling himself on the ground, he picked up a piece of wood and took out his knife. “What made your uncle decide to come to Wyoming?”
She spoke haltingly at first, but as the minutes passed and Cord continued to whittle quietly, asking just enough questions to keep her talking, she lost her nervousness and began to speak more easily. Her face lost some of its tautness when, laughing at some of her own stories, she told him of the years when her aunt was alive; he understood some of her uncle’s dislike of cowboys when he learned his wife and son had died of scarlet fever brought to Kansas by Texas drovers. It was some minutes before she was calm enough to continue, but Cord whittled silently, allowing her plenty of time to compose herself.
“After that Uncle was too unsettled to stay in one place.”
“You must be a great comfort to him.”
“Uncle Ira doesn’t place much value on girls,” she said without rancor. “Some days I don’t think he even knows I’m here.”
“How could anyone not notice you?”
“He’d notice soon enough if his dinner was late,” she said in a funny, sad way. Cord stood up, sending a shower of thin shavings to the ground; in his hand he held a carved head of Eliza’s milk cow.
“Oh!” she exclaimed. “It’s beautiful. How could you do it so quickly?”
“It’s just something I do.”
“But I was chattering all the while. Why didn’t you tell me to be quiet?”
“I like to listen to you,” he said simply.
“That witless cow doesn’t deserve to have her likeness made,” she said, unable to believe anyone would want to hear her talk.
“She’s your cow so you take it,” Cord said, holding the carving out to her. Eliza looked at him, then at the carving, and then back at Cord.
“Do you mean it?”
“Of course.”
“Are you sure you don’t want it for yourself?”
“I’ve got too many. Go ahead. Take it.” When she still hesitated, he took her hands and closed her fingers about the smooth wood.
It’s beautiful,” she sighed, looking up at Cord with a rapturous gaze that caused his pulses to beat a little faster. Could she possibly be the lovely, unspoiled girl she seemed?
“I wonder if the boys’ clothes are dry,” he said, turning his mind from a line of thought that was at once disturbing and intriguing. “They must be tired of being shut up in that cabin.”
Eliza didn’t hear him because Ira was galloping furiously toward them.
Wicked Wyoming Nights Page 4