I can’t make any promises, he’d told her. Kate didn’t care. She cried out with almost every thrust, and his own groans of pleasure told her she was indeed still able to please a man. He gently squeezed her breasts and nuzzled her neck, his broad shoulders hovering over her as he took her and took her. Their kisses deepened, and he moved his tongue into her mouth as though he wanted to take her in every way possible. Neither one of them was fully undressed, and Kate longed to be naked against him…to see him naked, too.
He shoved hard, over and over, as though he couldn’t get enough of her, and through it all, they said nothing. They needed only this…to touch, to taste, to invade each other and release pent-up needs and loneliness. Kate gloried in his last thrusts…they were a pair who in ways were still strangers…mating in the middle of outlaw country…no one around…no life other than their horses, who grazed quietly, paying no attention to the man and woman who were writhing together in the tall grass.
Luke raised up, grasping her hips and pounding into her until Kate felt his life surge into her. She looked up at the sky…such a big sky…such a big lonesome.
Twenty-three
Luke sighed, leaning down to kiss Kate lightly before adjusting his long johns and pants. He straightened Kate’s dress, then lay down beside her, pulling her close.
Kate rested her head on his shoulder and reached one arm across his chest, unsure what he must think of her now. She’d been brazen and wanting, and now here she lay with a man who’d been a stranger just days ago. She breathed in his scent—a scent unique to Luke Bowden, a scent she would never forget.
“Are you all right?” Luke asked.
“I’m fine. I just wish I knew what you are thinking.”
Luke faced her and smoothed some of the damp hairs away from her face. “I’m thinking that you’re a good woman who needed a man, and I took advantage of that.”
“I didn’t stop you. You’ve been lonely long enough, Luke Bowden, and you’re one of the finest men I’ve known. You need to be loved, and you need the kind of taking care of that only a woman can give you.”
Luke kept a hand at the side of her face, gently stroking her cheek with his thumb. “I just realized your burns are almost healed.”
Their gazes held, and a deep sadness came into Luke’s gaze. He closed his eyes and laid his head back down. “I can’t tell you I love you, Kate, because I don’t know if I do. I’m sorry.”
“I didn’t expect you to say it. I didn’t expect anything at all other than to be a woman, and you know how to make a woman be just that. I do love you, Luke Bowden, but I didn’t ask for anything more from you than this. I know what men want in women they love and marry. I’m past some of that. I know I’m not—”
He put fingers to her lips. “Don’t say it. You underestimate yourself. You’re beautiful and strong and brave.”
“But I’m not—”
“What did I just tell you? You’re more woman than most men are lucky enough to find even once in a lifetime.”
Kate took his hand and kissed his palm. She couldn’t help the tears that formed in her eyes. “What do we do now?”
“We wash up and ride on, and we make camp someplace a little more private than the middle of outlaw country grassland.” He leaned closer and kissed her gently. “And we do this again.” He grinned.
Kate couldn’t help laughing through her tears at the remark. She turned sideways and threw her arms around him. “Just tell me you still respect me.”
“I still respect you. And if you don’t mind, I want you undressed the next time. I got a little tired of looking at this beautiful body back at that cave and not being able to touch it. That’s damn hard on a man.”
Kate laughed again and kissed his cheek, his disheveled dark hair, his lips. “Do you really think I’m beautiful?”
“Yes, ma’am, I do.”
“Maybe out here anything looks beautiful to a man.”
Luke chuckled. “I guess in some cases you’re right.” He rolled on top of her again, running a hand over her breasts and kissing her again. “But not in this case. You truly are beautiful.”
Kate traced her fingers over the lines at the sides of his eyes—lines put there by living in wide-open country, most of the time with only the sky for a roof and the ground for a bed. The elements had beat up his youth, and the woman called Bonnie had beat up his heart. How could that woman not appreciate this man? How could she not wait for him? “If you went off to war again right now, Luke Bowden, I’d wait for you…faithfully…for years if it came to that.”
He squinted, studying her eyes. “By God, I believe you would.”
One of the horses whinnied.
“Shit!” Luke instantly was on his feet, buttoning his pants but leaving his shirt hanging out. He yanked his rifle from its boot again and looked around. “A couple of men…way off in the distance,” he told Kate. “Looks like they’re heading away from us, thank God.” He looked down at Kate and grinned. “And here I thought we were completely alone. Some things get in the way of thinking straight, I guess.”
Kate sat up. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, those men you just spotted could have ridden right up on us!”
“And they would have gotten an eyeful, wouldn’t they?” Both of them grinned. “Sit still and I’ll get you a towel and a canteen so you can wash yourself,” Luke told her, looking her over with a very satisfied gaze. He turned back to watch the men. “You have time. They are even farther away now.” He put his rifle back in its boot and retrieved a canteen and a towel, handing them down to her. “I won’t look,” he teased.
Kate couldn’t help the chagrin written all over her face. “What’s left that you haven’t seen?”
Luke folded his arms. “Nothing. But there are still some things I haven’t touched…or tasted.”
Kate frowned. “Now you’re being rude. Turn around, Mister Bowden.”
Luke turned away and leaned down to pick up his hat, which he’d lost when he was kissing her wildly and they’d practically fallen off of Red. He put it on and began tucking in his shirt.
“For crying out loud,” Kate said as she washed herself. “We’re out here in a land so big it makes a person wonder if it ever ends—a land where most people wouldn’t think of settling, yet I’ve been attacked, you were hanged, another man came along and attacked me while you were gone, those buffalo hunters found us, and now you’ve seen two more men riding out there somewhere. How on earth can a person run into so many people out here in the middle of nowhere?”
Luke leaned across Red, still watching to be sure the men he’d seen were headed away from them. “The fact remains that if we stayed out here longer it might be days or weeks before we see life again. We just happened to be in the right places at the right times, or maybe the wrong times. Fact is, I have a feeling the men I’m watching are headed for our cave.”
Our cave. Kate pulled on her bloomers and let her skirt fall. She liked that he’d called it “our cave.” She would always think of it that way herself and remembering all that had happened there made her feel like crying again. She realized that ever since Rodney was killed in the war, she’d hardly shed a tear once she stopped crying over losing her husband. She’d refused to let it get her down, told herself she had to be strong and go on with life.
A wagon train attack and Luke Bowden had changed all of that…or had it? She’d certainly met a man again, and she’d even fallen in love again. But he’d said he couldn’t be sure he loved her in return. She’d accepted that, yet she’d let him bed her, and she would let him take her again before they reached Lander and civilization…and the world of reality, where Luke might realize he’d been foolish to even consider he might love her or any woman.
She studied his back, his broad shoulders. The fact remained that she’d known him only seven or eight days. She’d lost track of time…and she’d lost her own g
ood sense. Truth was, if Luke Bowden chose to ride out of her life, she wouldn’t stop him because he wasn’t a man to be forced into anything. But he would take her heart with him wherever he went. She would never find it again.
Twenty-four
As they headed north, Kate thought how, from above, they must look like tiny insects making their way through the high, yellow grass. She continued to stay behind a little, figuring Luke needed time to think about what they had done. So did she.
Here they were, two strangers who had mated, not so different from the wild animals who came together at mating time, made their babies, then parted ways, never to meet again. Was that how it would be for her and Luke?
Looking ahead, one would never know there was any kind of town even remotely close. The incredibly vast valley stretched on and on, a sea of yellow, dotted here and there with a green tree that didn’t look like it belonged there at all. On both sides, the brown and red and yellow rock walls that supported vast mesas blocked them from the rest of the world, and always in the distance were the mountain ranges, threatening barriers to the sun and green and warmth of California and Oregon.
Would they truly go their separate ways come spring? The thought brought a painful loneliness to Kate’s heart worse than when she’d lost Rodney. How could that be, when she’d known Luke Bowden such a short time? She could still feel him inside her, still sense the hard muscle of his arms, feel his lips, taste his kisses. She could feel his fingers touching secret places, feel his warm breath against her most private part. Had she really allowed him to touch her there? Taste her there? She could see the way his dark eyes danced when he laughed. She loved his laugh.
She’d invited all of it, and when she did so, she’d invited heartbreak and loneliness. He was a man torn by indecision, reacting to his own broken heart, a man who’d needed to be with a woman and needed to feel what it was like for that woman to want and accept him…needed to know how it felt to trust.
But was that enough? When they reached Lander, he would change, she was sure. They would both come to their senses and go their separate ways to wait out the winter.
They ambled along for three more hours, taking an easy gait for the sake of the horses. Scout trudged behind the little procession, and off and on Luke smoked quietly. They stopped a few times to rest and water the horses and eat, but conversation was only about when they should stop for the night and how and when they should rest the horses or change their gait or shift some of the load between horses so that the animals weren’t overstressed. They talked about where she should stay when they reached Lander, what they could do to while away the winter there. Luke warned her about the kind of men who lived there, some just regular businessmen with wives and children, some suffering from war losses or from bad memories. Most were out-and-out outlaws who lived off stolen cattle and money. Some respected women. Some did not. She would have to learn to read their eyes and know the difference.
I can’t tell you that I love you, Kate. She told herself it didn’t matter. It wouldn’t stop her from letting him take his pleasure again, because she would enjoy it just as much as he did. If this was all she would have of him, then so be it. It was better than never having him at all. He was a good man—caring and protective. If he had to die protecting her, he would. She knew instinctively that he’d not just used her for his own selfish pleasure. There had been more to it than that. And the pleasure was not just his. She’d welcomed him inside her body, inside her heart and soul.
They kept going, heading for a log cabin Luke had spotted with his spyglass. It was just a dot on the endless horizon at first. Another place used by men traveling between Miles City and Robber’s Roost, Luke told her. If we’re lucky, no one will be using it tonight.
The wind picked up. All afternoon they had watched dark clouds roil over the distant mountains and make their way over plains and mesas and valleys and canyons, over yellow flatland and dry creek beds. As the edge of the oncoming storm approached, the temperature dropped, just like the day they were caught in the snowstorm that forced them to hole up in the cave.
Kate still couldn’t quite get over wondering what she was doing out here. She felt like a woman forgotten in time. Somewhere, far, far behind her lay a burned-out wagon train, the dead bodies of those men who’d fought hard to save it all, including the tough old guide who’d told her how to listen for thundering horses. She would never be able to find them again if she had to. They would all disappear into the earth, never to be heard from again. How sad. The thought made her chest hurt.
And somewhere back there was a gnarly old, half-dead tree where she’d cut a man down from a hanging, an act that had changed her life. She’d had no inkling that only a week or so later she’d be lying beneath that man, giving up her most secret places, taking him like a wanton woman.
The wind began to blow harder. Tiny droplets of sleet stung her face.
“Ride a little faster,” Luke called back to her. “Let’s get to that cabin!”
His words seem to fall away with the wind as it blew past her. She ducked her head and kicked Jenny into a faster trot, staying alongside the second pack horse and making sure the string of horses followed fast enough and didn’t drag down Luke’s pace. She took a rope from her horse and rode back and forth, from the lead pack horse to the bull, slapping their rumps and urging them into a faster pace.
“Hah! Hah!” she shouted. “Get up there!”
The sleet grew heavier. The wind grew colder. It didn’t snow, but it felt like it could start at any moment. There was no time to stop and put on coats. It seemed the wind penetrated everything she wore and she was naked against it. It took a good half hour of hard riding to make it to the cabin. Luke ordered her to help him get all the horses and the bull into a corral and into a lean-to built to protect animals from the west wind that howled down from the mountains and across the vast plains, picking up speed and moisture along the way.
Without saying much, they both spread out some feed grass someone had stacked in a corner. Luke took a small barrel of water from one of the pack horses and poured it into a trough that ran along the back wall of the shed below the feed trough. “That should keep them for the night,” he yelled above the wind. “If we can’t get back out here to unload everything, they will be okay until we reach Lander tomorrow. They rent good stables there with plenty of food and shelter.” He untied a gunny sack of his own things and one that held the necessities for coffee and one small meal. “Grab some blankets and what you’ll need for the night,” he told Kate. “I’ll get my weapons and supplies off Red.”
Kate did as she was told, untying blankets, a leather sack that held some of her homemade bread and some honey and hard tack. She walked to one of the other horses to untie the rope that held her heavier coat. She ran toward the cabin, leaning into the wind and putting some of her supplies in front of her face to shield it from the stinging sleet. Luke unloaded the rest of what he needed and followed, closing the gates across the opening of the lean-to so the horses couldn’t wander off. He and Kate both felt a sudden and welcome relief from the weather when they barged into the cabin and slammed the door shut.
“I’ll get a fire going and warm it up in here,” Luke told her. He stood his rifle against the wall near the door and dropped the things he was carrying onto the wood plank floor. The walls creaked against the wind while Kate sorted through their supplies and spread out their bedrolls and some blankets. Luke got a fire going with wood someone had left behind, and soon flames snapped and spit inside the stone fireplace. The warmth created fought with the cold air that insisted on making its way through cracks in the broken chinking between the cabin’s log walls.
Kate poured water into the porcelain-lined coffeepot and added grounds wrapped in cheesecloth, then set the pot on a grate near the fire. “Right now, the flames are too high to set the coffee any closer,” she told Luke. She thought how she and Luke had worked
out a routine over the last few days where each knew his and her jobs. There was no need to ask or to tell the other what to do next. Like an old married couple. She sat down on her bedroll near the fire and waited for the tiny cabin to warm up, if that was possible.
“This sudden change in weather could be gone again by morning,” Luke said, adding one more log to the fire.
“I hope so,” Kate replied. She rubbed at the backs of her arms. “I’ve never seen the weather change so fast as it does out here.”
“Nothing out here is normal,” Luke commented. “But being out of the wind makes things feel warmer even without a fire.” He came to sit down beside her and moved an arm around her shoulders. “You okay? You’ve been walking around on that leg like it was never injured.”
Kate winced as she unbuttoned her left boot and opened it to pull it off. “I’m fine. There are times when you just do what needs doing and hope you don’t pay for it later.” She removed her other boot.
Luke told her to turn sideways and put her feet in his lap. “I’d better make sure nothing is bleeding.”
Kate lay down on her bedroll and offered her feet. Luke reached under her dress and carefully removed her knee-high stockings.
“I should have carried you in here.”
“In that awful sleet and wind? And with the supplies we had to carry in? Nonsense.” Kate thought how odd it was that only days ago she’d been mortified this man had seen her wearing nothing but a man’s shirt when she’d let him take care of her leg. Now she relished his touch.
He examined the bandages wrapped around her leg. “Things look pretty good,” he told her. “I don’t see any blood on the bandages.” He gently squeezed the area around the wound. “Does any of this hurt?”
“No. Just a surface sting from the healing.”
“It’s going to be that way for a while yet.” Luke removed his hat and tossed it aside, then removed his leather vest and unbuckled his gun belt. He gently set her feet aside and removed his boots.
Ride the High Lonesome Page 15