Heart of the West (19 page)

Her gaze flashed to his face, then away. She seemed to draw deep within herself to still her trembling by a force of will. "Kindly remove your loathsome presence from my path, sir." She made to step around him, and this time he let her. "I don't have either the time or the inclination to banter or to trade insults with you."

"Yeah, I can sure see that," he said. He followed her so closely their shadows merged into one. "'Loathsome presence' is a pretty tame insult. Folk out here lean toward 'lickbelly bastard' and 'son of a no-good bitch' when they banter. What in hell are you doing?"

"I am developing the negative, of course."

She had stopped before an odd sort of tent that rested on top of a tripod beneath the shade of the larches. Made of India rubber, like a tarpaulin, it was the size and shape of a hay bale. The front end hung open to reveal a miniature cabinet of drawers and shelves lined with bottles, funnels, and beakers. She set the metal-framed case inside the tent beside a large tray filled with water, and began to button up the flap, speaking to him over her shoulder.

"This is a very delicate process, so I would be grateful if you would leave me in peace to accomplish it." Three sleeves dangled from the front flap. She tossed Gus's old hat on the ground, thrust her arms through two of the contraption's sleeves and her head through the middle one. a moment later her head popped out again. "Do not under any circumstances open this tent," she said, and thrust her head inside again.

He leaned against a larch trunk and stared at the back end of her. Her dress was an ugly liverish color, and it looked like she'd worn it to take a roll in a hog wallow. Fumes wafted from the tent, smelling like the inside of a patent medicine man's wagon. Haughty little bitch. The way she'd said "I am developing the negative, of course," in that uppity Boston accent, like he was too ignorant to be breathing the same air with her high-and-mightiness.

She was a long time with her head and arms stuck in the tent. He heard splashing sounds and a muttered "drat." So she had a temper, did she, beneath all her starch and those tightly laced corset stays? Finally she emerged, all flushed and damp. She put the hat back on and walked out from beneath the trees into the sunshine. She held a glass plate up to the sky, and her face grew vivid.

There she stood in her muddy, ripped dress and one of Gus's old hats, and yet she still had the air of the lady about her. She had the kind of looks that went with rustling silk and soft music. Winter looks, with her ash-fair hair and pale skin and bones that seemed as fragile as a film of spring ice. She breathed a little fluttery sigh. Her lips were lush and wet and parted as if in passion.

He wondered if she looked like that in bed at night when Gus took her.

He peered over her shoulder, trying to see what it was about the—what had she called it?—the negative that had gotten her all dewy and pink and excited.

She spun around, gripping the plate in front of her chest. Her hands, he saw, were blistered red and dotted with black stains.

"Guess your developing didn't work too good, huh?" he said.

She thrust her nose in the air and somehow managed to look down the dainty sunburned length of it, even though she was a good foot shorter than he. "It worked quite nicely, thank you."

"So why won't you let me look at it?"

He reached for the plate, and after a little hesitation, she surrendered it. "Be careful. It's still wet. And I haven't varnished it yet, so please take care not to scratch it. And remember it's a negative," she said, "so light and dark are reversed, of course."

"Of
course,"
he mimicked.

It was a ghost moose standing in a black meadow in hell. Yet Rafferty thought he could almost see the animal's powerful muscles quivering on the verge of flight, see the wind ruffling the grass and leaves, see each little ripple in the river. There was something about it that caught at his chest. This was his moose, his meadow. His country, damn her. And he felt violated, as if she had invaded a thing of his that was too private and intense to be shared.

"I've never photographed an animal before," she was saying, and the passion he had seen on her face now textured her voice. "It's difficult to get one to keep still long enough to make the exposure. But the light today is so bright and clear, all it took was ten seconds..." She trailed off. "It's a moose."

He gave a belittling snort, handing the plate back to her. "If you say so."

She pushed the negative into a wooden slot in the tent, her movements stiff, her jaw clenched so hard her chin trembled. He had hurt her feelings, poor baby.

She began putting bottles away, emptying pans of smelly water. He draped his arm over the tent's brace, watching her. "You don't usually see a moose this far down in the valley until later in the summer," he said. "He'd be in rut then, of course. A bull male all hot and lusty for a sweet female." He brought his head close to hers, and she went utterly still. His mouth was so close to her face that his breath stirred wisps of her hair. He smelled her scent, an unlikely mixture of photographic chemicals and mud, wild rose and woman. "Bulls in rut can be a whole lot dangerous. They've been known to fight to the death when two of 'em fancy the same piece of tail."

She stepped back, wiping her hands on her skirt. Her face was fresh with color. But her eyes, as she studied him, were as still and deep as a mountain lake. She looked at him for so long that he could feel his cheeks growing warm. "You're wearing a flower in your hat," she finally said.

On his walk home he'd come across a field of blooming camases, undulating in the wind. For the hell of it he'd picked one of the sweet-smelling flowers and tucked it through the silver-studded band on his Stetson. He had forgotten he'd put it there, and now he felt foolish.

"You got something against flowers?" he said.

"No..." Her mouth trembled, then broke into an all-out smile that lit up her face. "Only it's such a splendid contrast, don't you see? That pretty little flower stuck through the band of a battered old black hat above a scowling face with a purple eye and a puffy lip." She bit her own lip, catching back another smile. "Would you let me make a photograph of you?"

He stared at her, his gaze on her mouth. She might have the face of a lady, he decided, but she had the mouth of a whore, her lips full and lush and made for sinning. He ripped the camas off his hat and crushed it in his fist, then flung it away. The wind caught the slender petals, swirling them around in a blue cloud.

A charged silence crackled the air as he stared into her upturned face, and she stared back. She had eyes that were set wide apart and slightly protruding. Eyes the color of the moss that grew in the shaded parts of the river. Dense, dark green.

"Why do you dislike me so?" she said.

His gaze fastened again on her mouth, and he felt his own lips form the words: "I want you gone."

"Why?"

"Because you're gonna ruin... things," he said, then wished he hadn't. As it was, he and Gus had been having a hard time trying to make a go of the ranch without bringing a woman into it. And the thought flashed into his head before he could stop it: without bringing a woman between us.

"Well, it's too bad for you, Mr. Rafferty. Because you won't be getting what you want."

She stood before him, straight and delicate as the willows. Their eyes held as if locked. A minute passed when nothing was said and everything was understood. He was in a battle with this woman for the land he loved, and for the heart and loyalty of his brother, whom he loved more.

He felt a strange shakiness in his legs as he turned away from her. He prowled the meadow, restless, his thumbs hooked on his gun belt, the pointed toes of his boots kicking at tufts of grass. From time to time he cast a glance at her as she efficiently packed up her camera and the strange little tent.

He was beside her when she was ready to go. He bent to pick up a case just as she reached for it. Her hand closed around the handle, and his hand closed over hers.

He stared at her bent head, at the taut curve of her back.

"I always carry my own equipment," she said, her voice tight.

He let her go and straightened. "Suit yourself, then."

She stumbled away from him, lurching beneath the weight of the cases, her heels kicking up her skirt tails. He could feel the lingering imprint of her hand on his palm, singeing his skin as if he'd held it too close to the cookstove on a cold winter's morning.

He stretched out his stride to catch up with her, his boots cutting a swath through the grass. He studied her as they walked side by side in silence. He could see, even with her bundled up toe to neck in layers of starched cotton, that she wasn't much woman. Ass and hips as slender as a boy's, narrow waist, small breasts. She'd rolled the tight sleeves of her dress up to her elbows. Tiny scratches crosshatched the delicate skin of her arms. She was badly sunburned.

He really didn't have to work so hard at driving her away; Montana was already doing it for him. This country was too wild, too harsh. It would destroy her. It would crush her in its fist and toss her away as he had done with the flower.

She didn't protest when he took the cases from her and lifted them over the fence. He climbed the rails first and, without thought, held out his hand to help her after him. And she, without thought, gave her own hand into his keeping.

For a moment so brief he wondered afterward if he had imagined it, they looked into each other's eyes and an invisible skein of lightning wrapped itself around them. He felt the fire of it through all his skin and bones, through his very breath.

She was safely on the other side of the fence, but he still had ahold of her hand. Her bones were small, as fragile as a bird's wing. Her skin warm. Her palm was rough, too rough. He turned it over and saw white weals, like packing twine, curled around her flesh.

"Somebody took a strap to you," he said, shocked at the frayed edge he heard in his own voice.

She twisted her hand free of his grasp, her fingers closing. "It was a cane."

"Why?" He could see her heart beating, a tiny flutter at her throat just above the cameo. "What'd you do that someone would take a cane to you for it?"

"It wasn't
someone,
it was my father," she said in a sudden rush. "He found me looking at souvenir cards of the notorious outlaws of the Wild West. I was only supposed to get three strokes, but I wouldn't say I was sorry for it, and so he gave me more and more and more, and in the end I think he was the sorrier. He cried, but I didn't..."

She stiffened her back and raised her chin, as if daring him to ridicule her. Which was what he knew he should do, since he wasn't going to get rid of her by being nice.

But he couldn't do it, not with her standing there looking so proud and vulnerable. He wasn't going to let her completely off the hook, though. He gave her a slow, lazy smile. "I've been whipped a time or two myself for lookin' at naughty pictures. They weren't of notorious outlaws of the Wild West, though."

He smiled to himself at the gleam of interest that sparked in her eyes. Lord, she was such a young innocent.

"What were they pictures of?" she asked.

"Why, naked ladies of the Wild West."

He watched the tide of color begin at her neck above the cameo and flood her face. His smile turned wicked. "A curious mind is a dangerous thing," he drawled.

"Oh! You are..."

"I'm what?"

She didn't answer him. Instead she walked away fast, almost running, and leaving her cases behind. He caught up with her in two easy strides. "I'm what?"

"It is very obvious that you know well what you are, Mr. Rafferty. After all, why would a man brag if he could show off?"

He laughed out loud at that, and to his delighted surprise she joined him. He liked her laugh; it went well with her mouth.

She stopped it abruptly, though, when she got to the edge of the yard. She looked at the ruined laundry, and the blood came back up rich and high in her cheeks.

The wind, mocking her, lifted Gus's hat off her head and sent it sailing toward the corral. Rafferty caught it and brought it back to her. He held it out like a suitor presenting a violet posy, but she didn't take it. She stood still, looking right at him, but he wasn't sure she really saw him.

He set the hat gently on her head. "'They have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind,'" he said as he gathered up a loose strand of spindrift hair and tucked it behind her ear. His rough fingers snagged in her hair, the way they had her night rail. The back of his hand brushed her throat where the pulse still throbbed, harder than ever. A shiver rippled across the pale skin, and he heard her breath catch.

She jerked away from him. She started to rub the place on her neck where he had touched her and ended up crossing her arms over her breasts. "You... you astonish me, Mr. Rafferty. Although less with your accomplishment than with your courage—that you would dare to stand there beneath the eye of heaven and quote the Word of God."

"Hell, yeah, I can recite whole chapters and verses and not miss a 'thee' or a 'thou.' And I ain't once been struck by lightning, either. Shocking to think, ain't it, Boston?"

She made a little gurgling sound in her throat. He thought she was about to laugh again, and he held his breath, waiting for it.

His old biscuit-colored hound came tearing around the barn just then, chasing a rabbit and barking. The racket enlarged Rafferty's world, so that it was no longer one small woman with light hair and green eyes.

She began to gather the ruined laundry, tossing it in the tin tub. "I will wash it all again tomorrow," she said. She glared up at him, looking as if she wanted to heave the tub, laundry and all, at his head.

"And the wind'll blow again tomorrow, and the day after that. Most every day right on through the summer. Come winter, though, it'll get so cold you can freeze your wash dry. But then, you probably won't be here come winter."

"Your brother has been teaching me how to ride. Come winter I'll be riding your big gray."