Dorothy Garlock (3 page)

Annie Lash and Zan stood for a long moment. When Zan lowered his rifle, Annie Lash lowered hers and stood it just inside the door. She moved back into the room, her shoulders slumped dejectedly.

“Oh, Zan! What am I going to do?”

“Ya can mark that’n off. Ya ain’t havin’ no truck with him,” Zan said firmly.

Annie Lash went to him, wrapped her arms about his waist, and leaned her head on his chest. Zan stiffened and stood still.

“Let me lean on you for just a moment, Zan. I’ll be all right. I’ll make out, but sometimes it’s so hard . . . to be alone.” Her words were muffled against the soft buckskin of his shirt.

“Ya ain’t alone, Annie Lash.” His rough hand came up and patted her back gently. This was a big concession for Zan, who had never, by look or touch, allowed his affection for her to show. He hid it with his gruffness, but Annie Lash had long known it was there.

“It isn’t fair to you, Zan. I know you’d have gone long ago, but you stayed because of me and Pa. I don’t want to be a millstone around your neck.” She willed herself not to cry.

“Ya ain’t, gal. A good man’ll come, ’n till then we’ll go on as we’ve done. I got me plenty a time ta see the north country. Ain’t no call fer ya to be a frettin’. If’n I don’t go this spring, I’ll go next.”

“Oh, Zan! Thank you.” She lifted her head and his soft gray beard brushed her face. “There’ll be other offers and I promise I’ll take one before it’s too late for you to go upriver.”

“Ya jist take yore time a choosin’, Annie Lash. I be in no hurry.” He carefully examined the rough hinges on the door, and gave the chain that hung beside it a tug. “Ya’ll be all right with the chain up. If’n it gives, shoot the bastard.”

“I think I would. I think I could do it.”

“Ya better, if’n they come, ’cause they ain’t a comin’ ta talk,” he growled.

“Take care of yourself! Walt’s a sneak—he might be going to back-stab you.”

“Humph!” Zan snorted. “I git on the docks ’n he come a lookin’, he’ll git a pike in the belly. Ain’t nobody on the docks what’s got use fer Walt Ransom.”

“Be careful, Zan.” Annie Lash went to the door and Zan stepped out into the darkness.

“Put up the chain, Annie Lash.”

Large drops of rain were falling now, and the lightning flashes were almost constant. Zan was out of sight almost instantly, dodging around a pile of debris in the road. Annie Lash remembered her father telling her that Zan was “slick as an eel, quiet as a cat, the best woodsman I ever knew or even heard about.” Annie Lash wondered whatever turned him from the woods and toward the river.

A gust of wind blew raindrops in her face and whipped the loose strands of her hair. She shivered, backed into the cabin, and closed the heavy door. She looped the chain across and hung it on the iron hook Zan had put in a heavy oak log. The windowless room was a safe haven.

Annie Lash stood with her back to the door and surveyed the square that had been her home for the last few years. Different—oh, so different from their farm home in Virginia. Her pa had apologized for it many times before he died. The bunk where he had lain for so long was covered with a faded patchwork quilt. The corner where she bunked had been curtained off by another of her mother’s quilts. She had taken it down as there was no need now for privacy, and folded it across her bunk.

The crude log cabin had a slab wood floor, one of the few floors in the entire section of cabins that fronted the river. Her pa and Zan had just finished laying the floor when her pa was stabbed. Charles Jester had laid the cobblestones to make the fireplace and the lumber from the wagon that brought them from Virginia was used to make a table, benches, and a work counter. Her mother’s rocking chair, trunk, and gilt-edged mirror that hung over the walnut washstand were the only furnishings in the room. As if she were drawn by it, Annie Lash picked up the lamp and went to the mirror.

The reflection that looked back at her was that of a beautiful young woman, but Annie Lash was unaware of it. In a day when a young woman was considered to be in her prime between fifteen and twenty years old, Annie Lash felt old. In a month she would be twenty-three. Many women had had six children by the time they were her age. Not that Annie Lash wanted six children, but she was sure that she wanted more than one. She had been lonely all her life, longing for a brother or a sister.

On impulse, she began to remove the pins from her hair. It fell to her waist and below in wide, deep waves. If Annie Lash had any vanity at all, it was about her hair. It was rich brown, and thick, kept shining clean with the rainwater she caught in the barrel at the corner of the house.

She picked up the brush and began stroking. It was soothing to brush her hair. She thought of the times she’d seen her father stand behind her mother and run the bristles on the brush from her scalp to the ends of hair that hung to her waist. Annie Lash had been only a child then, yet it seemed to her that Pa got such pleasure out of doing this simple service for her mother. She wondered what it would be like to have a man run the brush lovingly through
her
hair.

The eyes that looked back at her were dreamy. Unconsciously, she puckered her mouth into the shape of a kiss. A loud clap of thunder shook the cabin and jarred her into awareness of what she was doing.

“Fiddle!” she said aloud, and carefully placed the brush in the combcase that hung beside the mirror. She swung her hair back over her shoulders and picked up the lamp. “Fiddle, and be damned for foolish notions,” she said under her breath.

As the thunder rolled and the wind-driven rain lashed the house, Annie Lash stirred the melting sugar in the iron pot she had suspended over the flame. A small puddle of water began to form under the door. She laid the wooden stirring paddle aside and placed part of a rag rug against the door to absorb the water.

“Oh, fiddle,” she groaned. She had completely forgotten the lamp was still lit. The lamp fuel was almost gone and she had intended to use it sparingly. Holding her loose hair back from the flame, she bent to the fire, lit a candle, and blew out the lamp. Dark smoke rose from the glass chimney. She shook the lamp to judge how much oil was left in the base. It scarcely sloshed at all. Damn!

A stunning crash of thunder seemed to fill the room. It was still echoing when another roared in its wake. Sheets of rain hit the sides of the cabin with such force that small trickles of water began to run between the logs, carrying with it the stain from the yellow clay. Annie Lash removed the picture of her mother from the wall and placed it on her pa’s bunk. It was warm in the windowless cabin, and she unbuttoned several buttons on her dress and wiped her perspiring forehead on her sleeve.

Eventually, the storm passed, but a soft, steady downpour of rain followed.

When the heavy rap sounded against the door, Annie Lash almost jumped from the chair. She settled back again and remained perfectly still, her eyes fixed on the door. The rap came again and again, deliberate and loud in the silence of the night, but she made no attempt to open the door.

“Hello, the house. I’m looking for a woman by the name of Jester.” The man’s voice was crisp, and she was sure she had not heard it before. “The man at the store sent me down. His name was Seth something-or-other.”

Annie Lash stood and moved slowly to the door.

“What do you want?” Her voice had a frightened tremor.

“Open the door. I want to talk to you.”

“Say what you’ve got to say from there.”

There was silence and she thought she heard him swear.

“I mean you no harm. I want to talk to you, that is, if you’re the woman that nurses the sick.”

“I only nursed my ma and pa.”

“Well? Are you going to open up or not?”

The hollow in her throat was beating and the pulse was jumping in her wrists. He didn’t sound like a tavern rough or a Pittsburgh boatman. She picked up a candle and lit it from the one on the table, then slipped a few links of the chain down on the hook so she could open the door a crack, but still have the security of the chain blocking the door. All she could see through the crack was the shadow of a man, a big man. Water dripped from his hat and the slick poncho cloth that covered his upper body.

“I can’t say what I’ve come to say through this door, ma’am. If you’re scared, here’s my gun. Be careful, it’s loaded.” He held the butt of the gun to the crack in the door and she reached for it, checked to be sure it was loaded, slipped the chain from the hook, and stepped back.

The wind from the open door blew out the candles. Annie Lash’s heart almost jumped out of her breast when the big figure loomed in the doorway. She backed against the table, holding the gun in front of her with one hand and fumbling with the buttons on her dress with the other.

He stood in the doorway, the wind that curled past him firing the spattering of coals in the fireplace into sparks. He made no attempt to come farther into the room.

“Do you mind if we have light?”

Annie Lash retreated back into the darkness, but he saw the hand she lifted in a gesture of consent. Leaving the door open, the man went to the table, picked up the candle, and lit it from the small blaze in the fireplace. The wind from the open doorway threatened the flame and he shielded it with his cupped hands.

“We’ll have to close the door. At least partway.”

Annie Lash felt her hand motion again, but he had already swung the heavy plank door to within a foot of closing and set a piece of wood to hold it. The thought came to her that she had never behaved in such a brainless fashion. It had been stupid to open the door a crack, stupider yet to let him in. He came to the center of the room and stopped.

“I’m not going to pounce on you, if that’s what you’re thinking. I want to talk to you and I’d like to have some light so I can see you and you can see me.” He picked up the lamp and shook it, seemed satisfied with the slush of the oil, and lit it without asking permission. He replaced the chimney and the soft glow of the light reached into every corner of the room. “That’s more like it,” he said without looking in her direction. He took off his hat and hung it on the peg beside the door, then slipped the oilskin slicker from his shoulders and hung it beside the hat. He turned and stood perfectly still so she could see him.

He was dressed in clean buckskin trousers and shirt such as many of the French trappers wore, but without the fringe and bead decorations. The deerskin moccasins on his feet accounted for the noiselessness of his movements on the plank floor. He was tremendously tall and broad. Handsome in a completely masculine way. Everything about him was big: big shoulders, big hands, feet . . . bones. In the semi-darkness she was unable to see the color of his eyes, but she could tell they were dark, either brown or black. His hair was light, very light. She had seen women with hair this light, but never a man. At first she thought it was gray, but when he turned she could see he was not old enough for it to be gray. It was cut short, so short she had scarcely noticed it until he took off his hat; but it was incredibly thick and curly and a sharp contrast to his dark face which, although it was unlined, showed him to be a man “who had been over the mountain,” as her pa would have said.

His face went with the rest of him; big nose, prominent cheekbones, and a wide mouth. Most surprising were his eyebrows and lashes. They were unusually dark for a person with light hair. His eyes, through the dark lashes, were studying her with the same intensity as she was studying him.

The silence lengthened. She could smell the tallow of the burning candle, the smoke of the burned log, even the scent of the maple candy cooling in the pan. Her thoughts stirred, awakening lazily. Her precious lamp oil was being savaged; she was alone with this big, silent stranger. Apprehension began in her, crept up her spine, throbbed in her temples, but no part of the feeling was fear. No, she thought clearly, she wasn’t afraid of him. Then why was she holding the gun?

The wind whined around the corner of the house and rolled a piece of debris against the wall. She’d have to tell Zan about this tomorrow. He’d be sure to scold. While she was thinking this, the man shifted his feet and lifted his hand to his belt and hung it there by his thumb. His hands were large, too; the fingers long with square, clean nails.

She waited, her eyes doing battle with his. She couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, could scarcely breathe. She was in a waiting pool. She must wait until he said what he had to say and left. He would do it . . . now. She was wrong. He said nothing. She was here, he was there, and there were no words between them. His mouth was motionless and stern.

She felt a small outrush of air stir her lips. She heard a voice that was her own, because the words came from her mouth.

“Won’t you sit down?” Actually, the only way she was sure she had really said the words was that he answered.

“Thank you.” He remained standing, but took his hand from his belt and waved it toward the rocking chair.

She moved around the table, backed into the chair, and sat down, holding the gun in her lap. She couldn’t stop staring at him. Her legs were weak and she was grateful to be off them.

In one long stride, he reached the chair at the end of the table and moved it out to the side so the lamp was no longer between them. He sat down, his forearms on his legs, his hands hanging between his knees.

“I’m sorry I frightened you.” The words came out slowly and fell into the quiet pool of silence.

She inclined her head and waited.

“My name is Jefferson Merrick.”

She inclined her head again and shifted the gun to lie across her knees, its muzzle no longer pointed at him. She wished her knees would stop trembling, she wished she didn’t feel as if she were off somewhere, out of her body, watching what was going on. She wanted to think clearly so she could remember every detail of this visit with this man who was like no other she had ever seen or talked with.

“I saw you today on the street and I asked the storekeeper about you. He said your name is Annie Lash Jester.”

Again she inclined her head. What was the matter with her, for goodness sake! Couldn’t she say anything? He didn’t seem to care whether she spoke or not; he went on talking, and she felt immense relief.