For the Love of Suzanne (28 page)

He didn’t wander too far and made sure he
could still see her and felt her watching him, wishing he could
provide a hotel room for her, a hot bath, and a real bed. This kind
of life was too hard for her. Although she never complained, he knew
she was suffering.

He found a dead spruce tree lying on its side and
pulled some branches off it and began to form a shelter, whistling
repeatedly for Titan. He was angry now. He and Suzanne had been on
foot for hours, were both famished and exhausted, and he was in pain
with the graze from the bullet.

“He isn’t coming back, is he?”

He turned at the sound of Suzanne’s quiet
voice “Who?” he asked patiently, despite his frazzled
nerves.

“The horse. Titan.”

“I don’t know,” he admitted.
“He’s well-trained and should have come back by now. He
may be hurt or something,” he said thoughtfully as he looked
around. “When I get this done, I’ll go hunting. We need
food to stay warm.”

“Can I go with you?” she asked with
some hope in her voice, desperately not wanting to get left behind.

“I won’t be long. Food is plentiful
out here. I’m sure I can shoot a rabbit or two without
wandering too far. You should rest.”

She accepted his answer quietly and wondered how
they were going to manage to stay alive in the frigid weather. She’d
heard of people freezing to death in the mountains and the Upper
Midwest. They had vicious winters and people were known to have died
in snowstorms and the cold. She didn’t have winter survival
skills and knew even if she did, she wouldn’t know how to use
them because this was not her time. Not her era. Everything was
different. She hated to depend on Cody even more, but if they were to
survive, it would be up to him.

He slipped his arm around her waist and gazed into
her eyes, seeing the uncertainty. “I’ll be back. I’m
not going to leave you,” he promised.

She nodded. “I’m sorry,” she
whispered.

“Aw, honey,” he cooed and hugged her.
“We’re going to be okay. We’ll have to keep each
other warm, but I think we can do that. Don’t you?”

She nodded.

“Okay,” he drew away, kissing her
lightly on her cold lips. “I’ll try to get a fire going
and go hunting.”

“Can I help you do something? Anything?”
she nearly begged.

“No. You just try to stay warm.”

She sat under the shelter, glad for the long coat
so she didn’t have to sit in the snow and watched him rub two
sticks together. She knew he was in pain, but he kept going at it
anyway.

“I wish I had that thing you used to make
fire,” he said good-naturedly as he took a break from rubbing.

“The lighter. Yes, I wish we had it, too. It
got lost at the fort,” she said apologetically.

“Whoever found it probably had no idea of
its power.”

“It really wasn’t power. They’re
everywhere in my world. You can buy them anyplace.”

He nodded and went back to rubbing the sticks
together with vigor and strength he didn’t have until smoke
started slowly swirling from it, making him rub even faster until a
small flame erupted. The wood was wet and the flame was weak, but at
least it was going and after a lot of blowing and fanning on the
smoldering pine boughs, he finally had a small fire. He was lucky to
have gotten it going at all and hoped it lasted long enough to cook
some food.

He showed Suzanne how to keep the fire going and
then went hunting. He didn’t have to go far or stay gone long
before he shot two rabbits. He brought them back and began to clean
them, whistling for Titan while he did.

All their gear was on that horse, including the
blankets, and it was going to be another cold night. It was
conceivable that they could freeze to death if the horse didn’t
come back.

He was worried.

~~~

Suzanne waited patiently as Cody cooked the
rabbits on sticks. She wanted to help, but he didn’t want her
to expose herself to the cold and it was, indeed, very cold. The wind
was calm and the moon was out in all its glory, but the air was
frigid.

The rabbits were very slow in cooking because the
fire wasn’t doing much better than it had been before he’d
gone hunting. He watched her huddle into the big coat and knew she
was cold and hungry, but she never said anything about it. He
wondered if all women in her world were like her. He’d never
heard a woman complain as little as she did. He tried to remember a
time when she had complained and couldn’t recall a single
incident.

She was burrowed deep into the coat, but was still
cold. She had her face buried in her arms as she sat with her knees
to her chin, watching him over the fire that was slowly gaining. She
had never been so cold in her life. She had a headache from the
frosty air, but knew it wouldn’t do any good to say anything.
Undoubtedly, he was cold, too, and there was nothing he could do
anyway.

He watched her as she dropped her head fully into
her arms as she held her knees close to her chest. “Hey,”
he commanded to get her attention.

She looked at him.

“Don’t go to sleep,” he said
sternly.

“Why?” she asked curiously.

“When you sleep, your body rests and when
your body rests, everything slows down and you slow down until you
die. Do not go to sleep.”

“Is that why people freeze to death?”

He nodded. “I would say some die because
they fall asleep in the cold. It isn’t a wise thing to do. I
don’t want you to die out here,” he said seriously.
“We’ve come too far to let that happen.”

“I don’t want you to, either,”
she said solemnly.

“I’m doing my best to see that it
doesn’t. After we eat, I’ll let you sleep for a little
while but not long. Okay? I’m thinking maybe we should get
moving again,” he said thoughtfully.

“In the dark?” she asked with
surprise.

“Moving will keep us warm. The moon is
bright and the light is good. But we aren’t going anywhere
until dawn at this rate,” he muttered, nodding toward the
rabbits on sticks as he held them in the weak fire.

She moved next to him and reached for one of the
sticks. “Let me help. Okay?” she said quietly, knowing he
was tired and that his arm must hurt like crazy. Judging from the
matted fur on his sleeve, he had lost a lot of blood. He needed to
rest worse than she did. He was constantly on the move.

He met her eyes for a moment, seeing nothing but
warmth and compassion, and reluctantly handed her a stick.

They sat quietly, slowly rotating the slowly
cooking meat in the flickering, weak flames.

“I’d marry you if I could,” he
finally said, breaking the silence. “You are such a beautiful
person. But I would never ask because nobody wants to be married to a
half-breed,” he said sadly.

She gazed at him, touched by his kind words,
wanting to tell him she would marry him in a second, half-breed or
not. It didn’t matter. “Maybe you wouldn’t want to
marry a white woman who is pregnant by another man,” she said
thoughtfully, looking back into the flames again.

“Maybe I wouldn’t if she had gotten
pregnant by another man willingly who wasn’t her husband,”
he conceded. “But obviously that doesn’t apply to you.
You were married when the child was conceived.”

She saw and appreciated his conservative values
that were much like her own. “I never had sex with my husband
before I married him, even though he wanted to very much. I’d
never had sex with any man before him or after him until you,”
she said with some embarrassment.

He nodded slowly. “You’re a decent
woman, Suzanne. I cannot imagine why your husband was so cruel to
you. It wounds my heart to think of you being abused,” he said
softly. “And it seems that’s all that’s happened to
you since we’ve met and it’s my fault.”

“No, it isn’t. Not at all. If you
hadn’t helped me in the first place, I probably would have
died. It’s not like you turned me over to Chief Tall Deer and
his son. They took me and you got me back. As for what happened to
the fort, you were in no way responsible for that. I should have been
safe there and I was for awhile. Then it got stupid, but it worked
out.”

“The major was a madman,” he muttered.
“I knew he was a little
loco
, but I didn’t know he was
like he was. I’m sorry I left you there. Hell, I’m sorry
about all of this,” he said distressfully with a shake of his
head. “I probably should have left you at that thing, whatever
it was.”

“It’s a car,” she said
patiently.

He nodded. “Yes. A car,” he
remembered.

“You did nothing wrong, Cody and I
appreciate all you’ve done. I would never have made it without
you. As for my husband,” she said with a heavy sigh. “Sometimes
I think I deserved what he did to me. I never knew when to shut my
mouth and I didn’t like him being out all night and carousing
with other women and drinking all the money. I told him so on more
than one occasion and it just angered him. I think he hated me at the
end,” she said thoughtfully.

He gazed at her. “I can’t imagine
anybody hating you.”

She shrugged casually. “It’s okay.
It’s over now.”

He nodded slowly, mesmerized by the slow burning
fire again,

“You know, you’re a really special
person. You are the nicest guy I have ever met and you’ve been
through all of this with me. That says a lot for you,” she told
him quietly.

“If I were anything special, we wouldn’t
be in this situation right now,” he mumbled, looking around for
Titan and hoping he was hiding in the trees.

She ran her hand over his fur-clad forearm. “It
isn’t your fault that the kid shot at us.”

“I should have known better than to travel
this country with a white woman,” he chastised himself. “You
heard Boris.
It ain’t right
,” he mimicked the old fur
trapper.

She smiled briefly at his mocking then grew
serious again. “Nobody thinks or says anything about it in my
world. Being Indian is who you are and you should wear it proudly.
It’s your heritage.”

“My heritage is going down with a bottle of
whiskey in one hand, beer in the other, and no pride in the heart. It
doesn’t seem to bother my people to take handouts or to sit at
the doors of the saloons in drunken stupors. We’re supposed to
be free yet they are slaves to the whiskey and the laziness. It will
ruin the Indian nations,” he said sadly. “And the worst
of it is I helped get us there.”

“You were acting in good faith, Cody. The
government lied to you just like it lied to everyone else.”

He shook his head in disbelief. “I wish I
had never become an agent. I didn’t want my people to get
swindled and with my education and being able to communicate
effectively with the whites, I thought I could stop it. It looks like
I added to the problem instead,” he said quietly with open
self-loathing. He looked at her. “You’re from the future.
What does it hold for my people?”

She met his eyes. “Are you sure you want to
know?” she asked uncertainly, not sure telling him was a good
idea. He was tormented enough as it was.

“Yes. Tell me.”

“Well,” she cleared her throat
uneasily. “Keep in mind, I’m not up on Indian issues, but
many Indian people of my time do not hold jobs; they drink
excessively, use drugs and end up in the gutters of the reservations,
towns and cities. The government gives them money, housing and food,
and they don’t have to work for it. Their living conditions are
substandard,” she explained, seeing him becoming upset. “But
like all people, some are very industrious and have money and do well
for themselves,” she added quickly.

“This is what the future holds?” he
asked with disappointment, ignoring her last statement.

She nodded solemnly. “I’m sorry. I
probably shouldn’t have told you,” she said sincerely,
wishing she could take back the words.

“Yes, you should have. You did the right
thing. I know it’s already starting. I don’t like what I
heard, but I know it’s the truth.”

“Yes, it is,” she said softly.

They were quiet for a long moment, just cooking
the meat and gazing at the fire as the cold air bit their faces and
fingers. Their hands and fingers were covered, but the cold was
permeating the hides and fur.

He let out an audible shiver and cupped his hands
over his mouth and blew into them then rubbed them together. “It
is so cold,” he said shakily as his teeth began to chatter.

She quickly retrieved his stick that he’d
dropped and held the meat over the fire. “I wish there was
something I could do,” she said morosely. “I’d like
to help you.”

“Honey, the only thing that’s going to
help us now is if one of those horses comes back, preferably Titan.
He’s bigger and can carry us both without a lot of trouble and
he has all of our supplies,” he said as he shivered and tried
to whistle and failed. “I can’t even whistle anymore,”
he said with frustration and stood up and began to pace around the
fire. “It’s so cold.”

She watched him, wondering if he was okay. She’d
never seen him act irrationally before and he wasn’t himself.
“Are you okay?” she asked worriedly.

“Yes. I’m just cold,” he growled
as he walked around the fire as if in a daze, rubbing his hands
together and blowing into them. “Damn, it’s cold.”

She watched him, thinking he might be delirious
from the loss of blood, fatigue, hunger and yes, the cold. She was
sure he was on the edge when he started walking away, unbuttoning his
coat and singing. “Hey!” she protested and ran after him
and grabbed him by the arm, but he kept moving.

He wasn’t walking fast, but he was oblivious
to her. “TITAN!” he yelled so loudly that it echoed
through the trees. “TITAN!” he called again and again as
she ran to catch up with him. He threw his coat on the ground and
started walking in wide circles, speaking his native language and
stopped calling for the horse.