Bride of the Shining Mountains (The St. Claire Men) (12 page)

Reaching out, he brought her trembling into his arms and kissed
her again, passionately. He kissed her until he heard her soft, heartfelt moan
and felt her melt against
him...
until she’d looped her arms about his neck to hold him closer,
closer... and then he let her go. “Now tell me again how wrong it is,” he said,
“this desire we share. Tell me that you do not want my love in any form or
fashion.”

Her perfect features wrenched suddenly, as if she were in pain.
“Damn it all, Jackson!” she cried, pushing him hard and stumbling back. “Don’t
you get it? This isn’t love! Hell’s fire, it ain’t even close. What you speak
of burns hot for a while, and then it dies. Love
—real
love—lasts. It endures the
bad times; it flourishes in the good.”

“Myths and fairy stories,” Jackson said contemptuously. “How can
you be sure this great love awaits you out there?” He made a dramatic flourish
with one hand. All of this talk about love was in reality the death knell of a
wonderfully promising evening, an excuse to hold herself apart from him. It
made him impatient. “Passion is all there is!”

“Passion is fleeting!” Reagan snapped. “And a damn poor companion
when the body’s weary and the nights grow long and cold. Love
—real
love—is more than a
moment’s pleasure. Oh, Jackson, don’t you see? It’s the sparkle in an old man’s
eye when he gazes at his wife of fifty years, it’s caring, steadfastness,
loyalty, compassion! It’s laying your head down beside someone and knowing
they’ll be there in the morning when you wake... and for all the mornings
after, for as long as you both shall live. It’s the warmth a mother or father
feels in here,” she said, placing her fist over her heart, “looking into the
faces of the little ones as they grow sleepy by the fire, and knowing their
babies are the product and the proof of the love they share. It’s all of that,
and
more....”

“Those things may exist in your world,” he replied softly. “But
there is no room in my world for such romantic sentiment. Mother of God, I
almost wish there were. I wish that loyalty and steadfastness abounded, instead
of hatred and
mistrust...
firelight and children’s sleepy faces instead
of shadows and deceit.” He paused and drew a weary breath before continuing.
“It’s a pretty dream, Kaintuck, a beautiful idyll, and I hope I’m there when
you find it. I should like to know that such happiness truly exists.”

With that he took up his rifle and returned to the darkness,
leaving Reagan to curl into a ball by the fire and cover her ears in a futile
attempt to block out the incessant howling of the wind.

She must have dozed, for she dreamed, ragged, disjointed images of
a dark-haired rogue who looked like Jackson, but bore the pencil-thin mustache
of Arley Pratt. Just as Arley had done years before, he stole a kiss under the
grape arbor, whispered sweet promises in her ear, then turned to someone else.
Yet
his
kiss was not the prim peck Arley had given her;
his
promises were hot and
salacious, not merely insincere, and instead of marrying Mildred Grumacher in a
hastily arranged ceremony, performed by the light of the harvest moon to the
accompaniment of Mildred’s older brother’s squirrel gun, the Jackson of her
dreams strolled away laughing with a lady of obvious charms and questionable
character, leaving Reagan to deal with the squalling consequences of their
brief liaison that had somehow miraculously appeared.

In her tormented mind, she jostled the crying infant, a mirror
image of its father, from his bright green eyes right down to his pencil-thin
mustache, and agonized over her shattered reputation.

The absurdity of the dream did not lessen its heart-pounding
effect, and for several seconds after she awakened, Reagan lay staring up at
the stars, drawing in great gulps of cool night air and trying to shrug off a
lingering uneasiness.

Aside from the dream, she had the vague impression that something
wasn’t right. The wind had ceased its mournful wail while she slept, and now
blew gently out of the northeast, an eerie, noiseless presence that made itself
felt, if no longer heard. Underlying that presence was a profound and unnatural
silence. The noisy nightly serenade of crickets, cicadas, and the strange,
poignant call of the cranes and egrets wading in the shallows of the river—a
chorus that struck up with each dusk and ended with the dawn—was strangely
absent.

Reagan’s hackles rose as she listened to the silence. It was
almost as if the prairie, and all of the creatures inhabiting it, was waiting.

But waiting for what?

The possibilities loomed large and frightening, preying upon
Reagan’s increasing uneasiness.

How much time had passed since Jackson had gone off again? She
glanced at the position of the moon. It was almost overhead. It must be nearing
midnight; Jackson should have returned by now. Following on the heels of that
thought came another, born of her steadily mounting insecurity.

What if, as Luther had, he’d decided that she was more trouble
than he’d anticipated, only instead of selling her at auction, he’d simply
walked away?

The idea of being abandoned in this flat, foreign, treeless place
set her heart to thudding painfully against her ribs. Panic surged through her,
filling the center of her being, crowding her stomach and lungs, threatening to
choke her, to block out all rational thought. In a moment she would begin that
same mindless wail to which Granny Dawes had been reduced when informed that
Raymond, her only son and Reagan’s father, wasn’t coming home from the
hinterlands beyond the broad Ohio. Reagan had been but three years old, and she
could barely recall her father, but she remembered that awful, half-human howl.

“Breathe, Reagan,” she commanded herself, glancing around, keeping
a stranglehold on her sanity. “Slow and deep. They had to threaten to smother
Granny with a feather pillow to make her stop, and her caterwaulin’ was not a
pretty sight.”

Calming slightly, she forced herself to glance around, taking
stock of her situation, and her gaze lit instantly on the leather saddlebags
that contained Jackson’s worldly possessions.

She reached out to drag them close, flipping them open. His gold
pocket watch was still nestled in among his other things: the fancy silver case
that held the slim black cigars he favored, a pearl-handled razor, a gold
toothpick, his dwindling supply of coffee, a pound sack of sugar, and the
frying pan in which he prepared their morning meal.

She’d seen him toy with the watch on numerous occasions, flipping
open the lid, his expression troubled, thoughtful, as he ran a fingertip around
the inscription in the lid. She’d even stolen a peek once, but she couldn’t
make sense of the tiny jumble of foreign words. Seeing it in the leather bag
made her breathe a little easier, but it was the presence of the cast iron
skillet and the coffee, sugar, and bacon that restored her confidence in him.

A decent breakfast was Jackson’s one true concession to
civilization, and Reagan was certain that he would not depart without supplies
that were so intrinsic to his hedonistic nature.

Impulsively she touched, then closed her hand around the skillet’s
handle, taking a strange sort of comfort from the cold, hard metal, the
solidness and considerable heft of the homely implement. As she clutched it to
her bosom, a heavy footfall sounded directly behind her, accompanied by a wheezing
laugh that set the fine hairs at Reagan’s nape to standing on end.

“Well, I’ll be dipped. If it ain’t L’il Sister way out here in the
grasslands, with Jack Seek-Um nowhere to be seen. My, my, how opportune, how
generous of that Frenchified breed to give old Abe and his blushin’ bride time
to get reacquainted, after we was so heartlessly torn apart.”

The stench from Abe McFarland, the combined odors of bear grease
and unwashed male, rolled over Reagan in a noxious wave, galvanizing her into
action. As she shot up from her place by the fire, he planted a huge hand on
her shoulder, kneading the tender flesh. Gripping the handle of the skillet in
both hands, Reagan pivoted, swinging the iron implement with all the strength
she could muster.

Clang!

The makeshift weapon rang like a rusted bell as it connected with
Abe’s thick skull.

The force of the impact rocked him up on the balls of his feet,
where he teetered for a moment, then sat down hard in the grass.

Reagan took to her heels, along the banks of the river, the
makeshift weapon clutched tightly to her as Abe’s voice rang out behind her.
“It won’t do no good to run! I’ve got a nose like a starvin’ hound. Sooner or
later I’ll run you to ground... and when I do, I’m gonna pound the piss ’n’ vinegar
outta you.”

“You’ll have to catch me first, polecat!” she cried, yet the
moment she was out of sight her bravado left her, and a niggling fear crept in.

She’d always been agile and quick, able to dart ahead of her
brothers, to pull herself up into the low-hanging limbs of a sycamore tree and
watch from the cover of the foliage as they scratched their heads below. Such
tricks had helped compensate for her lack of
lung
power. Yet here on the
prairie they were useless.

There was nowhere to run, and nowhere to hide, and except for her
doubtful protector, she was alone in the wilderness.

That thought, more than anything, spurred her on. She ran until
her breath was a searing pain in her lungs, until the stitch in her side made
her footsteps drag. Sweat ran down her face in thin, hot rivulets, stinging her
eyes.

Just when she thought she couldn’t take another step, the
slap-swish
of
moccasins pounding the grassy earth a few paces behind her came distinctly to
her ears. Unable to resist the urge to do so, she risked a glance back.

A few dozen paces behind her, a large form suddenly loomed up out
of nowhere. Overhead the fickle moon slipped behind a bank of heavy clouds,
casting the vast plain in deep shadow, preventing Reagan from gleaning any
detail.

Someone was following her, and from his breakneck pace, there was
no doubt in her mind that he meant to run her down. Cold terror congealed in
the pit of her belly as she realized her nightmare had been realized: she
hadn’t hit Abe hard enough to make good her escape. She’d managed only to delay
the inevitable.

With an unintelligible curse, her pursuer leaped forward, treading
so close upon her heels that his hot breath seemed to sear her sensitive nape.

In Reagan’s mind, the mountain of flesh that was Abe McFarland
hurled itself against her, bore her cruelly to the ground as her whimpering
cries floated over the dark rippling waters of the
Platte....

The Platte was running swiftly off to her right. It was a mile
wide, an inch deep, with a swift-running current and the occasional bed of
quicksand, so she hadn’t considered it a viable option. But with the feel of
Abe McFarland’s pinching fingers still fresh in her mind, she veered to the
right and leaped for the shimmering, dark water.

Treading close upon her heels, Jackson lunged, catching a handful
of homespun and dragging her back from the treacherous current of the river.

She did not take his intervention well. Spitting like an enraged
she-cat, she crouched and spun, swinging the cast-iron implement in a wicked
arc.

Jackson ducked, cursing as the wind from the weapon whistled past
his left ear. She swung again, and this time he caught her wrist. “Damn it,
woman!” he bellowed. “Have a care where you aim that thing! You might have
taken my head off just now!”

Her eyes were wild and held the light of terror still, as if she
looked beyond him to something too horrible to contemplate. Unsure what tack to
take, he held her immobile until she found herself again, until the terror
dimmed in her eyes, and unabashed relief took its place. “Oh, Jackson,” she
said, hurling herself against him. “Thank God it’s you.”

“But of course it is I,” he said, his arms coming around her,
drawing her even closer. The gesture was automatic, so natural that it seemed
second nature, so that for a fleeting instant he wondered how he had managed to
spend his days and nights before he found her.

When she had calmed sufficiently, he held her at arm’s length,
looking down into her upturned face. Just then the moon slid from behind the
clouds, shining down in all its full white glory. “What were you thinking back
there?” he demanded, pushing back the strand of gleaming dark hair that had
fallen forward into her face. “I called out to you. Why did you run? And, pray,
do not tell me you were intent upon a bath. It’s too late in the evening for
that. Besides, you know the riverbed is treacherous.”