Come Spring (52 page)

Annika waited until he was nearly out of sight before she dropped her arms and let her shoulders slump. Then, she picked up her skirt and started running.

Her yellow boots were not made to travel over lumps of last year’s dried buffalo grass and mud, but still she ran. Nearly falling facedown in the muddy earth, she let go of her skirt, stepped on the hem, then caught herself. Sobbing openly now, she raced on, away from the setting sun, away from the sight of Buck Scott’s silhouette growing smaller and smaller on the horizon, running until she reached the small knoll with the twisted cottonwoods where her brother’s babies had been buried.

There, heartbroken, Annika sank to the earth and buried her face in her skirt. She cried for Buttons, who would never see her uncle again, for Patsy with her demented mind, for Buck who had forced himself to give up his niece so that she would have the best life had to offer.

But most of all she cried for herself because Buck Scott had not believed in the power of their love.

   26   

B
UCK
kicked his horse and rode toward the blazing orange and gold sky, forced himself to look directly into the sunset, and tried, unsuccessfully, to tell himself that was the reason his eyes burned with unshed tears. The mountain peaks to the northwest—hulking gray shadows against the intense sun—stood hunched together like the humped backs of Kase Storm’s buffalo.

Just as she had done since the moment he’d first laid eyes on her, Annika Storm had just surprised him. He had expected her to argue with him one more time, to lay out all the reasons why he should stay and change his ways, take up her foolish notion that he could be educated and pronounced a doctor without a lick of trouble; it would be easier to change a leopard’s spots. But she hadn’t argued, nor had she asked him to take her with him, and that surprised him, too. She hadn’t insisted he say good-bye to Buttons, either.

Hell, come to think of it, she’d practically waved him on his way like a distant relative who had overstayed his visit.

Buck took a swipe at the irritating moisture in his eyes and pulled his collar up against the wind. It might be May, but the nights could get downright cold once the sun set, so he planned to be in Busted Heel by dark. He also planned to be downright drunk within an hour of his arrival.

One thing about getting down-and-out drunk—waking up the next day was a little like being reborn. Everything that had gone on the night before always seemed a little groggier, a little more distant. It was that distance that he craved.

While he had not been paying it any mind the sky had transformed itself from hues of yellow, gold, and orange to soft reds and pinks with streaks of violet. The underbellies of the high, scattered clouds were tinted red. Movement a mile down the narrow road drew his attention, and as he galloped toward it, the outline of a black buggy took shape against the weakening light. As the buggy drew nearer he slowed his pace, curious who might be heading toward the Storm ranch this time of day.

His initial thought was that it might be Richard Thexton returning to apologize to Annika and try to win his way back into her favor. Buck frowned at the thought. He had relinquished all claim to her when he left, but the thought of pasty-faced, buttoned-up Richard Thexton ever taking his anger and spite out on Annika again would make him turn around in an instant. Even if he couldn’t claim Annika for his own, he wasn’t about to let Richard take advantage of her.

Buck all but stopped in his tracks as the buggy neared and he was able to make out the shape of a man in a tweed suit trying to negotiate the vehicle over the badly rutted road. When the buggy was but a few yards distant, Buck saw that the man driving was not Thexton. He waited, nearly blocking the road, with one hand resting on his rifle in the fringed scabbard hanging from his saddle. He nudged his horse off the road to make room for the buggy and the driver slowed to a halt. The covered buggy looked weathered and well used.

“Been out to the Storm ranch, by any chance?” The man in the rumpled tweed suit stared up at Buck from behind round spectacles. His curly brown hair stuck out from beneath a bowler hat that had been pulled too far down on his forehead. As he waited for Buck to answer, he grabbed a top coat off the floorboards and set it on the cracked leather seat beside him. Even in the receding light, Buck recognized the black instrument bag that the coat had hidden from view.

“You the doctor?” Buck asked.

“That I am. Doctor Richard Earhart. On my way to see Mrs. Storm. You been out to the ranch looking for work?”

Buck could tell by the quick once-over the man gave him that the good doctor doubted someone like Buck might have been visiting the Storms. “Yeah. I been there. Mrs. Storm had her baby yesterday.”

Earhart’s face fell immediately. “Everything all right? Did it live?”

Buck nodded. “It’s a boy—healthy as a horse. You might want to take a look at Mrs. Storm’s stitches.” He would have given anything just then for a photograph of the doctor’s face at that moment.

“Who delivered her?”

“I did.”

“And she’s fine?”

“Believe it or not.”

An unmistakable look of relief washed over the doctor’s face. He put his thumb under the brim of his hat and pushed it back off his forehead. “Well, that’s great news. Great news! Congratulations in succeeding where I’ve failed before, young man.” He slapped his thighs. “When I rode into Busted Heel and found out Kase had come for me I felt terrible. Nothing to be done for it, though, I had to go clear into Cheyenne for supplies and stop off at three ranches on the way back. Not another doctor around between here and the Montana border. Spend most of my time driving over hill and dale only to do too little too late.” He picked up the reins and threaded them through his fingers.

With no reason to linger, Buck kneed his horse away from the buggy.

“What’d you say your name was?” Dr. Earhart called out.

“I didn’t, but it’s Buck Scott.”

“Well, Buck Scott, I could use a good assistant, if for nothing else but delivering babies. It’d free my hands for emergencies.”

A chill ran down Buck’s spine. If he didn’t know better he would have suspected Annika was behind the man’s sudden appearance. He looked at the emptiness surrounding them. The sun was completely gone, the land and sky turned gray. “I’m not a doctor,” Buck said. “I’m a buffalo man.”

Earhart barked out a laugh again. “Since when did that stop anyone west of the Mississippi from doctoring if they had half a mind to? Shoot, I’ve seen a veterinarian take out an appendix and I knew a seamstress who shoved a man’s intestines back in and sewed him up clean as a whistle.” He flicked the reins and his horse lurched forward. His coat slid to the floorboards again. As he pulled away from Buck he called out over his shoulder, “It’d beat chasing after buffalo that aren’t around anymore, son.”

Riding as if all the hounds of hell were after him, Buck kicked his horse again and bent low over his neck, pushing the big bay toward Busted Heel. But even the familiar cadence of hoofbeats and the creaking leather saddle couldn’t drown out the doctor’s parting words.

“B
UY
me a drink, mister?”

Buck straightened up, pushed away from bar, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. A blond—young in years but wise behind her eyes—stood as close to him as possible and leaned one elbow against the bar. One feathered strap of her frilly lavender chemise dropped low off her shoulder. He didn’t say a word, just stared.

“D’you hear me, mister?”

“I heard you,” he grumbled. He’d had more than his share of whiskey already, but he was still lucid, still aching. Now, as luck would have it, he was confronted by a half-naked blonde near enough in age and looks to be Annika if he squinted and the light fell across her face just right.

The hair was too different, though. Where Annika’s was tawny gold shot with honey-colored strands, this girl’s was brassy yellow, frizzled and frowsy, nearly standing on end around her head. It looked like somebody had been chewing on it, and since she looked the type that would let a man pay for anything, someone might have been doing just that.

Buck turned a cold shoulder to her and splayed his elbows on the bar again. He stared down into his whiskey but didn’t find any relief floating in the amber liquid. He threw back the drink and looked up, studying the occupants of the barroom in the mirror behind the long bar. He watched the girl’s reflection as she shrugged and walked away.

Two of the men near the door looked like drifters. They had an unshaved, unwashed look about them that bespoke homeless wandering. The rest were cowhands, their Levi’s worn in the seat and baggy at the knees. One, a tall, lanky man with red hair to his shoulders and a moustache that drooped to his chin, sat on a chair tilted back against the wall, laughing with a group of four others.

No one had paid Buck any mind. To a man they studiously ignored him. He guessed they had heard of or recognized him from his fight with Kase Storm.

Although he had carefully avoided his own reflection, it finally caught his eye as he tipped back the drink. Buck lowered his glass and studied himself. His buckskin jacket and pants marked him as a trapper. His lip was still cut and bruised, but the swelling was gone. A short slash running vertically down his lower lip marked the place where Kase Storm’s fist had connected with his mouth. His month-old beard had filled in during his time alone in the mountains. He wondered how long it would take him to grow it as long as Ted’s. Years? How many?

How many long and lonely years would it take?

Stop it. You made your choice. It was best for everyone.

He pulled his hat lower to shield the blue loneliness he saw reflected in the eyes that looked back at him from the mirror, but he couldn’t hide as easily from the thoughts that plagued him nor the memory of Annika’s face when he’d left her.

How does it feel to be the biggest coward alive?

His mood was so foul that if any man in the room had called him out, he would have beat him beyond recognition. But how could he rid himself of his own conscience?

She said she loved you. That she was willing to go anywhere with you.

Back to a run-down cabin at Blue Creek that couldn’t hold a candle to what she’s used to? Back to doing without and living with nothing?

She said she had money, enough to last her for the rest of her life.

Not enough to carry civilization up the mountain. Not enough to keep her from harm or the isolation that can drive a soul mad. Not enough to buy me.

What’s the difference when you’d buy her if you had the money.

He slammed his empty glass down. The stout barkeep jumped, then hurried over to him. From the nervous glances he threw Buck’s way, Buck knew the man hadn’t forgotten the brawl.

“Another one, mister?”

Buck shook his head. “I’m leaving.”

He’d pushed off the bar and turned to go when he noticed the one-eyed marshal ambling toward him with a bowlegged gait. He noticed that the man was wearing a pair of moccasins not unlike his own. The marshal made a beeline toward Buck and leaned on the bar right beside him.

“Rose Storm have her baby?”

Buck nodded. “She did.”
She had it because I was there to save her, because I caught it in my hands and started it breathing. She’s alive because I saved her life and the child’s.

“Boy or girl?” the old man asked.

“Boy. They call him Joseph.”

The marshal summoned the barkeep with a wave. The man walked over to them. “You owe me four bits, Paddie. Rosie had a boy.”

Buck stepped away from the bar.

“Scott...”

He halted at the sound of the marshal’s voice and turned around. “How did you remember my name, old man?”

Zach Elliot stepped up to Buck and kept his voice low because every man in the place was eyeing them. “You’re a hard one to forget. Not a man within a hundred miles of here don’t know you, not after the kidnapping stories in the paper, not after you showed up and tried to take a piece outta Kase Storm—”