Caress of Fire (17 page)

And to send the woman on her lonely way brought back memories to Lisette . . . memories of being alone and uncertain. She didn't wish for anyone to suffer that fate.

“Lisette,” Gil said, stretching out her name, “I hope you heard what I said.”

“You haven't fared badly having a woman along.”

“A woman. One, not two.” He pitched his boots to the ground and grabbed a cigar. He lit it, puffed in two quick draughts of smoke, then blew them out. “Get something straight, Lisette. I make the rules around here.”

“Cactus Blossom is to be turned out, and there's no arguing?”

“As I said, I make the rules around here.”

From his adamant tone, from the fierceness in his quicksilver eyes, Lisette knew there would be no arguing with Gil. It didn't mean she had to like it.

Frank Hatch didn't need this complication.

He cut a look of annoyance at Cactus Blossom as she spread his bedroll beside the shelter of a head-high precipice. Damn her. Why did she have to show up when everything was going so well for him and his plans for retaliation?

She turned and said, “We must powwow.”

“All I want is for you to leave,” he replied harshly.

Her big black eyes looked squarely at him. “I would not be here if I didn't think danger was upon you.”

“You and your stupid heathen notions.”

She shucked her buckskin sheath and stood naked under the moonlight. At one time Hatch would have been interested in the sight, but not anymore. And his revulsion wasn't totally a result of the self-inflicted scars that crisscrossed her belly.

She might be clean enough, but she was too sinful for his contradicting reasons and tastes.

She walked over to him, thrusting her tits upward, and he reached to twist a nipple. “I see your milk has dried up.”

She slapped his hand, answering, “It has.”

“Nothing's left of our daughter.”

“I will never forget Weeping Willow.”

“That I doubt. I don't think you give a care that she's dead.” Hatch cared, for all the good it did him. He ordered sourly, “Put your clothes on.”

“I am in need of a man.”

“Then go back to camp. I'm sure you'll find one there. You usually can, wherever there's a hard cock. Try the bearded one–Powell. He should be a challenge, since you seem to disgust him almost as much as you disgust me.”

“Would you like to watch . . . again?” was her languid response.

“I might.” Ever since the real Mrs. McLoughlin had let him watch her with Elmo Whittle, Hatch had enjoyed the perversion. He cut a glance at Cactus Blossom. “It'd be the only satisfaction I could get from you.”

“Then you will have to go unhappy. I will only trade my body to those I am interested in.”

“Gotten persnickety, eh?” She nodded, and he scowled as she made herself comfortable in his bedroll. “Get out of there.”

“No. I will sleep now.”

Goddamn annoying heathen. “Then sleep on the ground. I need my rest for tomorrow.”

“Why do you work, Dung Eyes?”

“Don't call me that.”

He huffed over to kick her buttock. Meaning to scare him and scooting away before his foot connected, she gave him one of those mean Indian looks.

“You didn't answer me. Why do you work, Dung Eyes? I feel you have evil designs on something here.”

“You do too much thinking.”

She stilled, and he knew her ears were pricking. Slowly she went for her knife, then lunged out from the ground to decapitate a rattlesnake–that had been slithering toward him!

“Well, you're still good for something,” he allowed as she sliced off the snake's tail and deposited the rattles in her pouch which held a score of this and that, most of it as detestable as the possessor. “At least I can depend on you to protect me from danger.”

“That is why I am here. The silver star in Lampasas is looking for a murderer. A man died in a fire, and you are known as one who sets fires.”

“No one knows that but you.”

“You are wrong, Dung Eyes.” She pointed the blade in his direction, no doubt to ward off another kick in the butt. “Word has reached the law that you are wanted in several towns for starting fires.”

“Yankee houses. I just burn carpetbaggers' houses.”

“If you send me away, I can tell the law in Fort Worth where to find you.”

“Bitch, I ought to slit your throat.”

“You won't, Dung Eyes. If you had been capable of killing me, you would have done it when the sun was rising over Dead Buffalo Bluff.”

“Don't remind me,” he bit out, closing his thoughts on her morning of ultimate sin. “I'd just like to know why the hell you're interested in staying with me.”

“I have no interest in staying with you.” Cactus Blossom put away her knife. “I am interested only in making certain you do no harm to the nice albino lady.”

“If that's all you're worried about, then you can leave. I have nothing against the”–he clipped off “new,” since it would be best to keep the squaw in the dark. “I've nothing against Mrs. McLoughlin.”

“But you have something against her man. I can see it in the dirty brown of your eyes.”

The damned squaw knew him too well. She knew he wouldn't kill her, and bring trouble on himself in the McLoughlin camp.

“If you hurt Long Legs, you hurt Albino,” Cactus Blossom said. “I will not allow you to work your evil.”

“I doubt you'll get the chance for anything but moving on. McLoughlin won't let you stay in his camp.”

Cactus Blossom settled back in the bedroll. “His woman will not make me leave, and you should not try to keep me away. Don't forget, Dung Eyes, I can protect you from danger . . . or I can tell the silver star where to find you.”

Hatch had to think on this a while. No way would McLoughlin allow Cactus Blossom to stay, but if he did, Hatch decided her presence might work in his favor, which was another reason to keep her alive.

Already he'd sensed that Lisette had a soft spot for the squaw, and Hatch wouldn't have anyone thinking him ungentlemanly by sending her on her way. Why not use it to best advantage?

 

 

Fingers of dawn touched Lisette's eyelids. She lay in her husband's arms, not wanting to start another day. Already she was late with breakfast, but leaving the cradle Gil provided was as simple as pulling teeth. Of course, she ought to be angry, what with his refusal to allow Cactus Blossom to stay with Mr. Hatch, but she understood his misgivings.

A pitiful bawling opened her eyes.

As she raised her head, nausea roiled. Taking a deep breath to quell it, she saw a mother cow and her newborn. The pair were about twenty feet from this pallet, the cow licking the birth-wet face. Lisette's heart tugged; she knew the calf would be left behind once the drive headed out.

Pulling away from her husband and picking up a canteen of water, she turned her back on the pitiable sight of
Mutter
and
Kleinkind
and went behind a bush to vomit up the contents of her stomach.

Finished with that and with a modicum of ablutions, she accepted her condition. She smiled. A babe was growing.

What would happen now? The trail drive was a long way from the railhead. Could she, would she, should she continue the trip? Of course she could and would. She wasn't some delicate flower in need of pampering. She was pioneering the trail, healthy as a horse, and babes had been incubated under far worse conditions.

She returned to the spot where she and her husband had slept. He was dressed, his forefingers grasping the mule-ears of his boot as he pulled it on.

“Good morning,” he said, and smiled at Lisette.

The newborn calf, a dozen paces to Gil's rear, captured Lisette's attention again. The mite was suckling an udder, his mother standing quietly with a look of pride and accomplishment on her shaggy, bovine face.

“Oh, Gil,” Lisette murmured, “aren't they wonderful?”

“Huh?”

And then she spied Cactus Blossom, a knife in her raised hand, stealing toward the animals.

“Don't you dare!” Lisette rushed forward. “Cactus Blossom, don't!”

Shaking her head, the Comanche woman sheathed her knife. “What is wrong now, albino? Don't you eat calf? It makes for tender eating. Even the toothless of my tribe can enjoy it.”

“We aren't interested in hearing stories of your damned tribe,” Gil said. “What are
you
still doing here?”

Cactus Blossom continued forward and stopped in front of Lisette and Gil. “I was looking for you and your woman, Long Legs. I have fixed a meal and coffee, and it grew cold while we waited for you.”

“My wife does the cooking for the Four Aces crew.”

Actually, Lisette rather enjoyed the idea of having a break from all those ghastly cooking smells.
You should be ashamed of yourself. Meals are your responsibility
,
and Gil depends on you.

“You'd rather have your woman cook than warm your tepee?” Cactus Blossom was saying. “You are a strange man, Long Legs.”

“Mrs. Hatch, if you've eaten, I suggest you be on your way.”

“Gil, we can't send her off on foot.”

“Go see Fritz Fischer, Mrs. Hatch. Tell him I said to give you a horse from the remuda.”

“I am not Mrs. Hatch. I am not
wife
to anyone.”

“It figures,” Gil groused. “Take Hatch with you. Take two horses and be gone.”

“My man doesn't want to go. He wants to work for you.”

“If he wants to be with you, he'll go.” Gil slapped his hat atop his head. “Come on, Lisette. We're wasting good daylight hours.”

Lisette wasn't in the mood to argue about anything. Yet as she walked past the calf, as Gil strung a rope around the mother's horns to lead her back to the herd, Lisette stood her ground.

“If Cactus Blossom wants to go along with us, I think we should let her.”

The Comanche woman beamed at this.

Gil did not.

He motioned to Cactus Blossom. “Go back to camp. And right now, God damn it.”

She turned on the ball of a moccasined foot and disappeared in the direction of the campsite.

His face set in a hard line, Gil asked Lisette, “Are you trying to tell me how to run my cattle drive?”

Lisette scowled. Gil wouldn't even want the Madonna along on their journey. Qualifying her statement, she said, “I'm telling you I could use some help.”

“Yates and Pigweed can do it.”

“That crabby old man and that slow-witted boy?” she asked, and disliked herself for playing dirty and skewering two men who'd treated her as if she were some sort of duchess. Nonetheless, she wasn't contrite enough to back down. “You know I haven't been feeling well, and Cactus Blossom would be a comfort to me.”

“Don't do me this way, Lisette.”

“I've been given to understand most trail cooks have assistants to help them.”

“You need help, ask for it. In the meantime, please don't appeal to my sympathies.”

“All right, fine. I'll just go on being lonesome, and you can go on being the big cattle baron, making his own rules. And the Lord help anyone who gets in your way.”

“What do you mean, lonesome? You've got your work, you've got more than a dozen cowboys at your beck and call, and you've got
me.
How can you be lonesome?”

“I miss having another woman to chat with.”

“Then you should have stayed back in Fredericksburg. There're a lot of women there.”

Irritated at his cut-to-the-bone remark, she stepped back, and her annoyance turned to a wish to get even. She huffed over to the mother cow, took the rope from its horns, and wound it around the calf's neck. The babe gazed up with trusting eyes; his mother threw back her mighty head to bawl a protest before tipping a horn at Lisette.

“What are you doing?” Gil asked.

“Oh, I don't know, making mincemeat pie?”

Thrusting her nose in the air, Lisette urged the wobbly calf along. She might not have any control over whether Cactus Blossom stayed, but she, by darn, wasn't going to leave this poor little baby for the buzzards.

Babies had special meaning to her.

Gil grasped the strongbox and tucked it under his arm. “If you're wanting to make mincemeat we've got plenty of suet in the chuck box.”

“Don't take my words so damned literally!”

“Watch your mouth, woman. It isn't becoming, your cursing.”

She didn't dignify his comment with a reply. Head held high, she walked the calf to camp. The mother followed along docilely. Lisette heard her husband's footsteps behind her. The hoodlum wagon in sight, she called out to Pigweed Martin, “Unload your wagon. Put some hay on the floorboard. Then help me pick up this newborn cow. We're–”

“We're what, Lisette?” Gil asked, danger in his tone.

He ground to a halt in front of her and dropped the strongbox. The boom of steel hitting the hard ground caused her and the baby calf to jump.

“If you'd let me finish, you'd know. We're taking the calf with us.”

With his loose-jointed gait, the skinny wagon driver walked toward the trail boss. A thumbnail picked at his protruding teeth before Pigweed asked, “That be okay with you, Chief?”

Lisette held her breath.

“Hell, no, it's not okay.” Gil's hand chopped the air. “We're not hauling any dead weight to Abilene.”

Disappointed, indignant, and vexed beyond reason, Lisette muttered through clenched teeth, “I might have known.”

Well, she wasn't going to let any mule-headed, callous-hearted husband of hers stand between right and wrong as she saw it. The calf wasn't going to be left behind; he
would
ride in the open-air hoodlum wagon. And in her husband's favorite terminology, that was that.

Tugging gently on the rope fastened to the newborn calf's neck, Lisette guided it–no, him–to the chariot of his salvation.

The little fellow lifted his snout to cry for his mother. The magnificent beast, her muscles moving like waves beneath the tan-and-white hide, trotted over to her offspring. She reared her broad head to moo before lowering it to nudge the babe to an udder. He found breakfast again.
This is what life is all about,
thought Lisette . . .
a loving mother taking care of her own.

Just as she would be doing . . . someday in late autumn.

At the crest of her thought, Gil ordered, “Yates, put the strongbox away.”

Lisette wound the slack end of the rope around a wheel, then proceeded to climb aboard the hoodlum. The wagon was piled high with crates and bedrolls. The crates would have to stay. The bedrolls–it was back to the chuck wagon for them. Guided by the careening emotions that had plagued her for days, she started to make room for the bullock by dumping a bedroll on the ground.

Gil hurried over to the wagon and clamped his fingers around the wooden sideboard. Sunlight glinted in his furious eyes. “You'd better not be doing what I think you're doing.”

“If you think I'm clearing this hoodlum for the calf, then you know exactly what I'm doing.”

“Lisette, get down from there. We are not, absolutely not, taking that bullock with us.”

“Oh yes, we are. He'll ride from here, and in this very wagon.”

The mother cow lowed; her great horns turned in Gil's direction.

He ordered, “Rope this cow. Get her to the herd.” The mountaineer Attitude Powell rushed forward as Gil bellowed to Pigweed Martin, “Get all this bedding back in the wagon.”

His overlarge gray eyes protruding, Pigweed protested, “Your missus might hit me with one of 'em bedrolls, Chief. She's powerful mad. Can I wait a few minutes, till she gets her dander down?”

Pigweed got no response, and every man still in camp was watching the McLoughlins with absorbed attention. Cactus Blossom watched, too. Frank Hatch seemed to be hiding a smirk.

Eli Wilson rode up. “Are you all right, Mrs. McLoughlin?”

“Get lost, Wilson.”

The preacher looked at his boss, then at the boss's wife. “Are you all right?” he repeated.

“Yes. Now, please do what he said.”

From the corner of her eye, as she continued to pitch bedding from the wagon and the preacher rode out, Lisette spied her husband reaching for the rope.

“Don't you dare untie it,” she threatened.

His arms akimbo, Gil glared. “Get down from that wagon. And I do mean now.”

“Don't tell me what to do!” She tossed a bedroll at him, missed. “I'm not budging until I'm finished with these.”

She launched another bedroll; it struck his chest. If she thought there had been murder in his eyes before, she was certain of it now. She had pushed him too far.
You've been acting like a child.
Her temper abated, but what could be done to rectify the situation?

Turning to Cactus Blossom, Gil asked, “You know how to drive a wagon?”

“Yes.”

“And you're wanting a job?”

“Yes.”

“You're hired.”

“Now, McLoughlin, don't be hasty,” Hatch interjected. “Cactus Blossom and I neither one want to bring trouble on y'all, nor injure you in any way. You were rather adamant about not having her along.”

“Hatch, do you or don't you want this squaw of yours?”

Hatch nodded.

Rubbing the stump of his arm under his chin, and riding a black cutting horse, Wink Tannington returned to camp. He said and did nothing.

Johns Clark, on the other hand, inquired, “Ma'am, do you need some help?”

“No, Johns–thank you.”

He shot her a look of sympathy, as did Deep Eddy Roland, who said to Gil, “What's the harm in taking the bullock along?”

“When you're the goddamn boss, I'll tell you!”

Deep Eddy raised his hands in a gesture of I-give-up, and like Johns, went for his mount.

Gil whipped around. “Pigweed, fetch my sorrel from the remuda.”

Pigweed set out at the same instant Lisette bent to toss the last bedroll on the ground. All remaining in the hoodlum were crates of supplies and a woman who dreaded owning up to her fit of temper.

“Herd ‘em up,” Gil ordered the cowhands. “Cactus Blossom, round up these bedrolls. Put 'em in the chuck wagon. Hatch, give her a hand. When the two of you get through, Hatch, get riding. Cactus Blossom, set that chuck wagon in motion.”

“Albino, come on.” The tiny Comanche woman looked up at her and extended a hand. “We leave now.”

“She is not going with you,” Gil announced, his words dangerously even, all of a sudden.

“Albino . . . ?”

“Go on, Cactus Blossom,” Lisette urged, shaking in her boots. “Do as he says.”

The Comanche, wariness in her gaze, accepted the orders.

And just where
does
this leave me?
Lisette asked herself as Hatch and his woman scurried about and the campsite cleared out. She didn't have to wonder long. Gil parked his foot on the wagon tongue, swung a leg into the bed, and lunged toward her. As if she were a sack of potatoes, he heaved her onto his shoulder, debarked from the conveyance, set her to her feet. He dusted his hands, riveting a look of total disgust into her eyes, and stomped toward the approaching sorrel.

He intends to leave me here, she concluded.

Desert the mother of his unborn child, right here in the middle of nowhere.

“What about me?” Lisette asked, her voice weaker than she would have wanted.

“Way I see it, you got your choices. You can behave and ride with me on Big Red. Or you can stay here and caterwaul till kingdom come. Do whatever strikes your fancy.”

Once before he'd ordered her to abandon the outfit. This time his suggestion didn't cut as deeply. Once she thought about it, she knew he wouldn't leave her here. Not over so little as a calf.

She decided to call his bluff. “I choose to walk this baby to civilization.”

“Like hell you will.”

Tight-lipped, he wheeled around, and with long and hurried strides, returned to grab the calf into his arms, its mother lowing a protest from the distance. Gil set the calf to its feet on the floorboard.

Thankfully he wasn't deserting the baby.

“I'll ride in the hoodlum,” Lisette said courageously.

Gil shook his head. “It's the saddle or the soles of your shoes. Take your pick.”

“I choose to walk. I don't fear the wilds,” she lied.

“Good. Glad to hear you're not scared. You've learned the first lesson in survival.”

The hoodlum driver returned, leading the mighty Big Red. Pigweed's eyes nearly popped from his skull as he caught sight of a hairy, bovine face peeping above the hoodlum's sideboard.

“Boy,” Gil explained, “you're dragging this calf along.”

“Chief, I don't reckon I hanker to smell his poop all the livelong day.”

“Where's your head, boy? All you've gotta do is stop every once in a while and muck the wagon out.”

Pigweed shrugged a thin shoulder. “Ifn that's what you want, Chief.”

“That's what I want.”

“What about your missus?” Pigweed asked, screwing up one side of his face.

“She makes her own choices.”

“Missus, reckon you wanna ride with me?” The driver raked a hand into his crop of straw-colored hair and waited expectantly.

She shook her head.

“All right, I guess, missus.”

Nothing appeared too right with Gil McLoughlin.

Pigweed meandered to the hoodlum wagon, got aboard, and clicked his tongue as he snapped the reins. The wheels were set in motion. The mother cow broke loose from Attitude Powell. She trotted to the wagon, following along as if she were a donkey chasing a carrot.

“I couldn't help her getting away,” fretted Attitude as he hurried forward.

Gil tossed his arms wide. “Just get on your horse, then. Ride out.”

Attitude went for his mount, and Gil glared at Lisette. She didn't know how to make amends with her husband. And right then she didn't know if she wanted to.