Come Spring (40 page)

“You sure she wanted to leave?”

“You saw her that first day. She sure as hell didn’t want to stay, did she?”

“That was then. This is now. You mean to tell me nothin’ happened to change her mind while she was here? You ain’t exactly the unpersuasive type.”

“Nothing happened,” Buck grunted. He ran his hand over the lower half of his face and felt a week’s worth of beard. Good. He would never shave again. Not for her. Not for anyone. He’d let his beard grow long as Ted’s, let it go until it hung down to—

“Who you suppose took her back?”

“I don’t know. Most likely her brother.”

“She really had a brother then? I should have taken her up on her offer to take her back that first day.”

“Her brother’s Kase Storm. Ever heard of him?”

Old Ted scratched his nose and then he scratched the Mouse behind the ears. “He ain’t that marshal that wiped out most of the Dawsons, is he?”

“The same.”

“Hell, good thing you were out huntin’ when he got here.”

“Yeah.” Buck tried not to imagine Annika’s joy when her brother rode up to the cabin. Had she flung herself in his arms and poured out the story of her misery? Had she told him how she had duped the big fool who kidnapped her into thinking she loved him? Had she shrugged off Baby as a burden she only had to bear until they could drop her off somewhere in Cheyenne?

He closed his eyes and leaned back against the wall.

“More?”

Buck opened one eye and peered at Ted, who was holding out the whiskey crock. “Why not?” He held out his cup.

He was too weak to walk. What would it hurt if he got stinking pie-eyed? The worst that might happen would be that he would fall out of bed.

The best thing that would happen would be that he wouldn’t wake up at all.

“I’ll be goin’ down into Cheyenne as soon as you’re up and around. Want me to take your winter haul down and sell it for you?” Ted offered.

If he let the old man go down and conduct his business for him, then Buck wouldn’t have to chance hearing about Annika. Her rescue was still bound to be all the talk in the saloons. If he waited long enough before he went back to Cheyenne, the story would die down.

“Sure. Why not? You plan on comin’ back through this way?’

“If I take your load down I will. I’ll bring back your money and word of the girl.”

Buck turned on Ted, his hand clamped around the cup, his jaw working furiously. “I don’t want to hear about her. I don’t want to know what happened to her or Baby. Never.”

“Never’s a long time.”

“Shut up, old man.”

Setting the whiskey crock on the crate beside Buck, Ted stroked his beard and shook his head. But he said nothing. He turned away from the sight of Buck sprawled in the bed in his underwear, one leg hanging out exposed, the jagged black stitches running from just above his knee to well up his thigh.

“Where you going?” Buck frowned as the old man walked toward the door.

“For a walk. I’ll be back when you’re not in such a piss-poor mood.”

T
HE
expansive corral held twenty-two buffalo all marked with the Buffalo Mountain brand. Dressed in a simple shirtwaist and navy skirt that flared prettily about the ankles of her matching blue boots, Annika stood on the lowest rail of the fence with her arms hooked around the highest and watched the massive animals amble about. Most of them seemed content to stand staring at the ground or lie on then-sides contemplating the flies that buzzed around them. She tried to imagine them roaming free, the way Kase had told her they once had, moving in wave after wave, a shaggy brown mass rolling across the prairie, cutting down everything in its path. He told her how the earth used to shake when the herds ran free.

The two bulls in the corral scared her just to look at them. Their horns were sharp, curved upward above huge, woolly black heads. Behind the head was a sloped hump of faded brown. Their hides were shedding, huge patches of fur had fallen out or had been rubbed out as they wallowed in the mud holes on the ground.

“There’s something mysterious about them, isn’t there? Can you feel it, or are you just biding your time out here until Buttons wakes up?”

She started when she heard her brother’s voice so near her elbow. Kase always had moved lithely for so large a man. When they were younger, she was always accusing him of sneaking up on her. Brushing her windblown hair back off her face, she smiled as he leaned against the fence beside her.

“They make me feel peaceful somehow. I can’t imagine why, unless it’s because of the way they just stand there. It almost seems as if they’re just waiting for something to happen.”

When he spoke, Kase’s voice was sad. “They are waiting for things to be the way they used to. They’re waiting to run free across the plains with their brothers who will never return. They’re waiting to be hunted by the Sioux who will never ride to the hunt again.”

“How do you know?”

“I feel it. Don’t you?”

She shook her head. “I’m not sure.”

“Someday maybe you will. Do you realize the plains people lived on nothing but the buffalo? They were independent of the white men as long as the buffalo roamed the land. Tipis and robes came from the hide, glue from the hooves, thread from the sinews, knives from the ribs. The paunch provided water bags.”

Annika watched a cow move across the corral. “Where did you find them?”

“It wasn’t easy. We rounded them up one at a time, sometimes two. They were wandering strays, barely existing. It took two years to find nineteen. The young-looking ones were born here.”

“What will you do with them?”

Kase looked off toward the mountains. “Keep them. Feed them and care for them so that my children will know what a buffalo is, so that their children’s children will know.” He turned to her, stared down into her eyes as if he could see into her soul, and said, “Men like the one that took you captive nearly wiped them off the face of the earth.”

She swallowed. “Maybe they didn’t know. Maybe they thought there would always be enough.”

Kase shook his head. “They knew. The men that paid them knew. When the buffalo were gone, the Indian would be gone as well. It was a grand scheme.”

“Surely not,” she protested.

He looked at his sister, at her fair hair and features so like their mother’s. It was not her fault. She didn’t know, couldn’t feel what he felt He had always known he was Indian, in his blood and his heart Annika was more white than Indian. Perhaps she would never feel the things he felt He thanked God she had never faced the prejudice he had known but had slowly learned to live with, just as Caleb Storm had.

“How long will you keep the child here?” He changed the subject abruptly to catch her off guard. His ploy worked. He watched her face blanch, saw pain behind her eyes before she looked away.

Annika fingered the wooden rail and then gnawed on her thumbnail. She shrugged. “A month ago, I thought Buck would be coming after her. Now I’m not so sure.”

“Buck? You say his name so reverently.”

She turned to him again. “No I don’t.”

He ignored her protest. “I’m worried about you, Annika. You don’t eat, you spend all day working in the house for Rose.”

“Aren’t you glad? She can barely move now that the baby’s almost here. I’m trying to do as much as I can for her, Kase.”

“That’s what worries me. It’s just not like you.”

“Thank you so much, brother.”

He pulled his hat down low over his eyes until they were shadowed. “The little sister I left in Boston was only concerned with her social affairs and wearing the latest styles. You would never have so much as boiled water for your own tea at home—”

“That’s not fair, Kase. I never had to work at home. Here, it’s different, and now I’m doing it to help out Rose.”

He turned on her then, scowling down at her to hide his deep concern. “No, you’re different. That man hurt you more than you’ll admit, but I can wait to find out just how much, Annika. I have to wait until Rose has the baby, and I have to wait until you’re ready to tell me all about it, but I’m a patient man now. More than I ever was before. I’ll wait.”

She watched him walk across the dusty ground toward the barn that stood between the house and the buffalo pen. When he disappeared inside, she turned back to the fence, tempted to lay her head on her arms and cry. Instead, she straightened her shoulders, took a deep breath, and tried to think things through.

Why hadn’t Buck come? She needed to see him, wanted desperately to tell him she was ready to live anywhere he wanted. Anything was better than this separation. She had thought of asking Kase to take her back into the mountains to search for him and Blue Creek, but they couldn’t go until Rose had her baby and had safely recovered. Besides, given the way he felt about Buck Scott, she knew it would be ridiculous to even ask. If she told him the truth, she was afraid he really would want to have Zach lock Buck up and throw away the key.

She tried to put herself in Buck’s place. Would he believe she could never leave him so abruptly on her own, or would he see it as an escape? He had suspected her of trying to escape the day she had packed the picnic, but after the tender way he had made love to her that night, after the way she had responded so openly, she didn’t know how he could doubt her feelings.

Now that she had been forced to be without him for a month, she realized it didn’t matter where he wanted to live. She needed him more than she needed anyone else in her life. The thought of returning to Boston without him brought tears to her eyes. Even the idea of staying on here in Wyoming was no consolation without Buck in her life.

The wind had picked up. It blew constantly, so much so that she was growing used to it, but now, as dust swirled across the corral, she decided she’d had enough. Head down in thought, she crossed the barnyard. Her skirt swirled around her ankles, the hem swaying evenly, barely dusting the ground.

She looked up at the gaily painted house with its creamy yellow exterior the color of rich, fresh butter. The trim was a brilliant white enamel, every spool, every spoke, carefully painted. For a moment she envied her brother and his wife. Like her parents’, theirs was a love that was so apparent, so alive, that the two seemed as one whenever they were in a room together.

It was hard to imagine she and Buck working together as man and wife. They had such a strange beginning, their worlds were so opposite, that she wondered if she were insane to even pursue a reunion.

Reunion? She chided herself. He didn’t even care enough to come and take her back. Maybe, she thought, just maybe he’d gotten what he wanted. He had used her in bed, found a convenient way to see Baby Buttons safely out of his life, and was now free to live exactly as he wanted—alone and free. He had told her himself he didn’t really want a wife, that he had only written to Alice Soams so that he might have a nursemaid for Baby. Why should he have changed his mind just because she had fallen so willingly into his arms?

As she stepped up on the back veranda and opened the door, she wanted to cover her face in shame. Dear God, to think that she had almost attacked him that first time—and had made love on the table, no less.

“There you are,” Rose called out, startling Annika so that she almost jumped.

Annika’s eyes were riveted on the kitchen table for a moment, then, with her face flaming at the memories of another table and another time, she guiltily eyed her sister-in-law. “I was out looking at the buffalo.”

Rose smiled. “Like your brother. The buffalo have something for you and not for me. I see them and I see only the dirt and the flies. But”—she shrugged—“Kase gets joy from them and so I do not care.”

Stepping up beside the woman who was at least a head shorter, Annika watched as Rose rolled out a perfect slab of pie dough. “Where’s Buttons? Has she been bothering you?”

“Never. She is the perfect
bambina.
For now, she naps.”

Annika shook her head, but smiled nonetheless. “She can be quite a little imp. You didn’t carry her upstairs, did you?”

Rose shook her head and lifted the dough. Carefully, she laid it in the pie pan, pressed it down, and then picked up another ball of dough. Every movement seemed instinctive. Rose talked as she worked while Annika marveled at her skill. An earthenware bowl full of peaches tossed in sugar—and from the mouth-watering scent, they’d also been mixed with cinnamon—sat ready to go into the pie shell. Annika couldn’t help but sneak a peach slice.

“Again, like your brother. I tell him not to steal the fruit before the pie she is finished.”

Rose looked at Annika over her shoulder, studying her intently, her hands still for the first time. Annika leaned against the kitchen cabinet and waited. She had come to love and trust her sister-in-law. Perhaps if she told her all that lay so heavily on her mind she would come to some conclusions. Finally, since Rose seemed to be waiting for her to speak, Annika asked, “What is it?”

“I am just thinking that perhaps there is something you want to tell to me. You are worried, no?”

Sighing, Annika looked down at the dusty toe of her shoe. “I need to talk to someone.”

“But you cannot talk to your brother?”

With a shake of her head, Annika admitted quietly, “Not about this.”

“It is the man, yes? The one that took you away?”

Annika nodded.

“Ah. I know so. Tell me.”

“You won’t tell Kase?”

“If you say no, I don’t tell.”

“Please don’t then. I’m afraid I’ll eventually have to tell him, but I can’t yet. He’s still too angry, and you know how he is when he gets angry.”

Rose rolled her eyes and began spooning peaches into the bottom crust “Oh, I think he is not so bad as he is when I first come to Busted Heel. He is not so angry all the time as before.”

Annika knew her brother had come to terms with his heritage, most of which was unknown to her. With her own problems and his anger at Buck, she had hesitated to ask him about the rift with their parents that had forced him to move to Wyoming five years ago.

“I couldn’t tell Kase everything—I couldn’t tell anyone—but now I don’t know what to do and it’s driving me crazy, Rose.”