“Do I have that scarlet of a reputation now?”
“What in this world are you talking about?” Emily said, and entered the room as confidently as if she’d been invited, forcing Cotannah to step back and let her pass. “I’m only teasing you, you silly goose, and you know it.”
It was true. Her tone had held no censure. Suddenly Cotannah was glad beyond belief to have her company.
She sighed and closed the door before she followed Emily toward the bed.
“Leave it open for the cool breeze, if you want—I don’t care if we wake the whole household,” Emily said. “I’m just so happy that you and Sophie weren’t hurt today that I intend to celebrate all night.”
“But if we wake the others, we’ll have to share the tea cakes,” Cotannah said, and ran to lift a napkin off a plate on the tray as Emily set it down on the rumpled sheet and threw the covers all the way back over the footboard. “We do have plain sugar tea cakes, don’t we?”
“Most certainly. And with extra sugar sprinkled on top just the way you like them.”
Emily had come home from their horrific afternoon and made tea cakes, just for her! And she was here, in the middle of this endless night, ready to resume their old friendship, ready to drive the loneliness away. Tears sprang to Cotannah’s eyes.
“Let me get out of this dress,” she said. “We’re going to sit in the middle of the bed and get crumbs all over us and talk all night just like old times!”
“No, let me see you in it first,” Emily demanded, stepping back to take her arm to turn her around, looking her up and down, front and back. “Where in the world did you get it, Cotannah?”
“In Corpus Christi. Isn’t it the most disgraceful dress you’ve ever seen?”
“I think so. And I can’t imagine where you’d wear it,” she said, laughing, “except here in your room—but Cotannah, I have to say just what I’ve always told you. You are a stunningly beautiful, striking woman, and that dress makes no bones about it.”
“Maggie says I need a bodyguard to wear it in public.”
“Have you ever?”
“No. I only wore it … well, for Tonio. He was … a vaquero on the ranch. I used to wear it under my cloak when I met him at the line cabin on Saltillo Creek.”
Emily didn’t bat an eye.
“Was? What happened to him?”
Cotannah twirled around again, then picked up her nightgown puddled in a white pool on the oak floor, and began unfastening the dress at the waist.
“Cade fired him,” she said. “He said it was my fault that Tonio wouldn’t leave me alone after I broke up with him.”
Sudden modesty overcame her, and she turned her back to pull the dress off over her head and don her nightgown.
“Quick,” she said, “prop up the pillows for us. I’ll be right there.”
“Did you think it was your fault? That Cade fired Tonio?”
Cotannah threw the dress over a chair.
“No! It was Tonio’s fault,” she said defensively. “I told him it was over between us, and he knew I meant it.”
“Why was it over?”
Cotannah shrugged and began buttoning her gown as she walked to the bed. “I was tired of him.” She sent Emily a defensive glance. “He didn’t amuse me anymore, he was getting so serious, so demanding. He forbade me to even look at any other man, he was talking about marrying me. Incessantly.”
Emily gave her a straight look. She was sitting cross-legged in the bed, now, holding the tea tray in front of her with both hands so Cotannah could climb up into the bed without spilling anything.
“And you didn’t want to marry him?”
“No. He didn’t mean that much to me.”
The words popped out before she knew she had thought them.
She hesitated, then laughed and reached out to help steady the teapot as she climbed in and sat opposite Emily.
“If Cade heard me say that, he’d say he told me so,” she said. “I don’t mean that Tonio meant nothing to me … I, well, I loved him, in a way, I truly did. But I’m not ever going to marry—I don’t think I’ll ever trust any one man to that extent.”
She caught Emily’s eye and smiled.
“I like lots of different men.”
“Like them or hate them?”
Stunned, Cotannah stared at her.
“What do you mean?”
Emily uncovered the cups, picked up the pot, and began to pour.
“Cotannah,” she said slowly, “in spite of what you said when I came in a minute ago, you do know that I would never judge you?”
Cotannah thought about that while she took a sugary tea cake from the plate and began to eat it, heedlessly brushing the crumbs from her lap into her bed.
“Yes,” she said, and knew it was true.
“For one thing, after what I did to you—marrying the man you had planned for ten years to marry—I have no right to judge anyone. For another, I know from watching my mother be miserable for all the years of my childhood that rules and social conventions can do as much harm as good.”
Cotannah nodded impatiently.
“But why do you think I hate men?”
“It would be perfectly understandable if you did.”
Once more she was grateful for what was not in Emily’s voice. This time it held no pity.
“After enduring the hell of Headmaster Haynes and his whip when you were just becoming a woman and then, such a few years later, the terror of being kidnapped by those bandidos and almost carried off to Mexico—and, I must admit, after Tay came to Texas for you and ended up with me instead—it’d be pretty surprising if you could trust men easily.”
She spoke as matter-of-factly, as if she were discussing the weather.
“Trust you to get all the old boogermen out in the open,” Cotannah said, with an ironic chuckle.
“You need to talk about them,” Emily said. “It’s the only way to be rid of them forever.”
“I can’t. I push them all down so deep they never come out except in dreams.”
“If you only could get it all out, maybe to me … I’ll listen anytime, ’Tannah.”
“Then you would have terrible dreams, too,” Cotannah said gently. “Besides, Mimi, you’ve done your part. You helped bring me back from wanting to die after the bandidos, not to mention the fact that you and Tay rescued me from them.”
“Well, if you see that as a debt, you repaid it a thousand times over this morning when you rescued Sophia,” Emily said, her big brown eyes overflowing with tears. “If she’d been hurt, it would’ve killed us all. Oh, ’Tannah, thank you.”
Cotannah’s hand shook as she remembered the terror of thinking Sophia would die in front of her very eyes. She forced herself to pick up her teacup.
“I didn’t do a thing,” she said. “It was Walks-With-Spirits who saved us both. He’s the one you should thank that you still have your baby.”
As she said his name the feeling of being in his arms flowed through her again, so strong she could smell the woods on his skin and hear the deep, sure sound of his voice. The question she had been trying to avoid ever since came crashing through the defenses she had built around her heart.
She dropped the cup back into its saucer with a clatter, splashing hot tea onto her thigh through the thin fabric of her gown. It didn’t even make her flinch.
“Why did I feel the way I did when he held me?” she blurted. “Oh, Mimi, I wasn’t even scared!”
Emily stared at her.
“What do you mean, you weren’t scared?”
“Oh, I was scared, about Sophia getting hurt by the bricks—or me getting hurt, but what I’m talking about is when Walks-With-Spirits snatched us up. I didn’t even know anyone was near, I didn’t see him coming, the first thing I knew he had grabbed me and locked his arms around me and I didn’t even feel the panic.”
“What panic?”
Cotannah propped her elbows on her knees and leaned across the tea tray toward Emily,
searching her eyes for the answer to the question she was so afraid to ask even herself.
“Ever since … Headmaster Haynes, well, since the bandidos … whenever a man puts his arms around me, even when I’m expecting it—even when I’ve tantalized and encouraged him to do it—I get this horrible feeling of a smothering panic until I can hardly bear it, until I can barely breathe.”
“Oh, ’Tannah!”
Now there was pity in Emily’s tone and in her eyes, but it was too late. Cotannah had already said too much, and now she aimed to find out all she could.
“It goes away after a little while, after my mind gets used to what’s happening to my body,” she said. “And after my instincts realize that the man I’m with isn’t going to hurt me.” She drew in a deep, ragged breath. “But, Mimi, with Walks-With-Spirits, even though he shocked me so, I never felt it at all. Not one tiny twinge of it. From the instant he slammed into me and Sophia like a runaway train and scooped us up completely helpless, I only felt safe. Completely, thankfully safe, and I don’t understand why.”
Emily just looked at her, holding her cup frozen at her lips.
Finally she answered.
“Because you were in danger and he saved you from it.”
“No!” Cotannah cried, her voice breaking with frustration. “That was an entirely separate thing, escaping the danger.”
She reached out and took the cup from Emily’s fingers and set it on the tray. Then she took her by the arms.
“Normal women don’t feel that panic, do they, Mimi? But I have felt it with every man every time one put his arms around me.”
She shook her a little, as if to shake the truth from her.
“So why not with Walks-With-Spirits? Tell me that!”
“Because he sees you as a person, not only as a woman, perhaps,” Emily said, frowning in concentration on the problem. “He looks at everyone as simply people. People who have souls precious to the Great Spirit, people who have brothers in each other and in all the animals.”
Cotannah shook her head.
“Maybe. But my instincts knew he was a man.”
“Ye-es,” Emily said thoughtfully.
“Plus he judges me every time he sees me,” Cotannah said petulantly. “He told me I’m a silly baby, and he makes me feel like a brazen, clumsy hussy when I try to flirt with him.”
Emily laughed.
“I don’t think even your rose-colored dress is the way to make him notice you,” she said. “He’s just so … ethereal. I think he’d be more attracted to something wise you might say.”
She shook her head.
“I don’t know, ’Tannah, why you felt safe in his arms. He’s just different from any other man, he truly is.”
Then she pulled her arms free and took both of Cotannah’s hands in hers.
“But you aren’t so different from other women that you should call them ‘normal’ and not feel ‘normal’ yourself,” she said. “You are a wonderful, incredibly beautiful woman, Cotannah, and some man is going to love you to distraction someday.”
“We’ll see,” Cotannah said. “And if that’s true, we’ll see if I can love him back. In the meantime, I’m just glad I still have a best friend who loves me.”
“It’s true, isn’t it?” Emily said, squeezing her fingers. “I was just thinking the same thing. How can I be so blessed as to have my baby and my best friend given back to me on the very same day?”
“I hope nothing ever comes between us again.”
“It won’t. It can’t. We won’t let it.”
They looked at each other for a long time, then sealed that pledge with a long hug that rattled the tray and spilled more tea on the bed.
“Well, it certainly won’t be that I’m trying to chaperone you,” Emily said, when they pulled apart and pushed everything back onto the tray. “Tay and I just want you to be happy, and so does Cade. You know that. That’s why he insisted you leave the ranch.”
“I should’ve known you’d be great. I never should’ve dreaded coming here, but Cade made me so furious, bossing me and judging me the way he did.”
“Don’t be mad at him, ’Tannah. I think only another woman could even guess at how you feel about men after all the hard knocks you’ve had.”
Her understanding tone made a huge lump form in Cotannah’s throat.
“I think Cade wanted you and Tay to keep me away from all men, but I do need to have a beau while I’m here,” Cotannah said, “just for the principle of the matter.”
“I know. You need to show everyone in the Nation that you have other suitors while you’re living under my and Tay’s roof.”
Cotannah shook her head in wonder and smiled ruefully. “This is why we were true best friends for so long,” she said. “You understand me better than anyone else in the world.”
“And you me.”
Emily righted things and poured them both some more tea.
“We’ll be going to the horse races two days from now,” she said, suddenly, “and Walks-With-Spirits will be there.”
The suddenness of the remark made Cotannah laugh.
“You sound like a matchmaker, Miss Emily. And how do you know he’ll be there?”
“He’s been doctoring our bay mare, which is going to run. He’ll come to look her over at the last minute to see if she’s sound.”
“After Jacob pulled a gun on him today he may be scared of getting shot if he comes back to town.”
“Walks-With-Spirits isn’t afraid of anybody or anything. I’ve seen him face down a dozen people without turning a hair, people calling him witch, yelling that witches have to be killed.”
“Aunt Ancie says he’s an alikchi.”
“So do I and the half of the Nation who disagree with the other half, who say he’s a witch.”
Goose bumps sprang up on Cotannah’s skin.
“That scares me,” she said. “Somebody besides Jacob might try to kill him.”
Suddenly, she couldn’t think about that. She couldn’t think about Walks-With-Spirits at all, anymore.
“What do the two halves of the Nation say about Jacob Charley?”
“Some … mostly men … say he’ll never be the man his father is,” Emily said, “and others … mostly young girls and their mothers … think he’s a charming young man and a great catch.”
“Jacob’s earthbound, for sure. He’s not ethereal.”
“And he would notice you in your rose-silk dress.”
They both laughed.
“Indeed he would. I have a feeling he would not let me out of his sight in my rose dress.”
Emily broke a tea cake in half, then let both pieces lie.
“Be careful,” she said. “He sounded really mean when he was arguing with Walks-With-Spirits.”
“I will. I’m only amusing myself with him.”
“Today in town it looked as if you can amuse yourself watching the two fight over you,” she said pensively. “Maybe we’re wrong. Maybe Walks-With-Spirits does see you as a woman, after all.”
“Only briefly,” Cotannah said, “for about one heartbeat when I was wrapped in his arms smashed up against that tree with Sophia between us.”
“And maybe Jacob isn’t mean,” Emily said. “It was probably his hurt pride talking this morning—he must’ve been terribly embarrassed that he wasn’t the hero of the day.”
“You haven’t changed one bit, Emily Harrington,” Cotannah said, laughing. “Always trying to see the best in everyone and every situation. Always trying to make everyone happy.”
“Neither have you changed, Cotannah Chisk-Ko, always trying to stir up some excitement.”
They both laughed frequently as they emptied the teapot and ate every tea cake on the tray and talked of one person and then another, of Las Manzanitas and Tall Pine and every member of the family, sharing every detail they could recall of these past two years of separation. Then they cried together when they spoke again of Sophia and the danger of the afternoon just passed
.
Finally, when the big clock downstairs began striking four, Emily clambered out of bed and hugged Cotannah good night.
“I’m so glad that we’re friends again,” she said. “I’ve missed you fiercely, ’Tannah.”
Cotannah confessed the same and then, when her old friend had gone back to Tay, she wandered to the open window and lifted her face to the breeze. She could sleep now, for having Mimi’s friendship again was a wonderful comfort against loneliness.
The thought of it made her shake her head in wonder that their old wounds were healed. Emily truly was the kindest, dearest person, and a wonderful friend who never stopped trying to make other people happy!
But it would take a miracle for her inveterate matchmaking to work out. Cotannah knew in her heart that she might as well forget about Walks-With-Spirits and concentrate on Jacob Charley or somebody else, maybe someone she would meet at the horse races. If Emily was right, she would never have any more power over Walks-With-Spirits than she did right now.
For she would be helpless trying to deal with a man who responded to her as a person instead of a woman. And she couldn’t say something wise if she tried from now until she was ninety.
The horse races were still held in the same place Cotannah remembered from her childhood: the grassy flats south of Tuskahoma that stretched east from the Texas Road along the Kiamichi River. And the homey smells of fry bread sizzling and grape dumplings cooking, the sounds of children playing horse while they rode down the saplings that grew near the river and of the adults calling back and forth and making wagers on the running horses were all still the same.
Auntie Iola called out from her seat in the shade, demanding a hug before Cotannah had even dismounted, and that was still the same, too. She lifted her face to the breeze and let it ruffle her hair as she unsaddled Pretty Feather and turned her to graze with the other horses. All of it, everything, was still just as it had been in the best times of her childhood.
Except for her.
She pushed that thought away. The day was beautiful, and excitement crackled in the air the way it did only on Race Day and she was not going to let any guilt or regret sneak into her mind to spoil it.
“’Tannah, you come here this minute and give your old auntie a hug!” Iola called again.
After the Thunder Page 8