Heart of the West (23 page)

He snorted a laugh as he scooped another dipperful of water out of the butt. He pointed the dipper's handle at her chest. "You know, for all your highfalutin, la-di-da ways, you got a tongue on you that could rip the hide off a buffalo. Bet Gus didn't know that about you before he married you, huh? He never has liked uppity women."

She would not discuss Gus with him; she would ignore him. She wanted him to leave her alone. She wanted him to get on his horse and ride off the Rocking R spread and out of the RainDance country and keep on riding until he was back in the hell that had spawned him.

She reached beneath the chuck box and picked up a burlap sack of potatoes. As she set the sack on the cook's table, she heard a shrill buzzing and she tensed, for she hated bugs and it seemed that out west they were everywhere. Gnats, flies, and fleas plagued her constantly. And those hideous black beetles that fell out of the sod roof at night and into her face and hair... She shuddered at the thought even as the insect whirred again. A katydid must have hopped into the wagon; the grass was full of them.

She scraped a knife around the scrawny, gnarly potato, watching the brown skin curl free, yet aware still of that man. Sliding quick furtive glances at him.

He had taken off his hat and emptied the dipper over his head. The ends of his hair hung over his collar, dripping water. His shirt, already drenched with sweat, clung to his back. She lowered her gaze to the gun he wore. Blue-black and deadly-looking, it rested in an open leather holster that was looped over a thick cartridge-studded belt and tied to his thigh with a thong. It looked too heavy for his lean hips. Yet he wore it easily, as much a part of him as his hat and boots. Gus had told her that cowboys, when they bothered to carry a gun, wore it on a belt cinched up around the waist. Only lawmen and scoundrels who fancied themselves gunslingers wore them hip-low and tied down at the thigh. She had no doubt which category Zach Rafferty fell into. Why, she wouldn't put it past him to have ridden with the James gang, robbing trains and stagecoaches and gunning down innocent bank tellers in the street—

His gaze whipped around suddenly, clashing with hers, and she jumped.

A tortoiseshell comb slipped out of the coiled bun at her neck, bouncing off her bodice into the dusty folds of her skirt. A hank of hair fell over her shoulder, strands of it sticking to her damp cheek. Her hands full of potato, she turned her head, trying to brush the hair off with her arm.

Suddenly he was standing before her, slipping his hands around her neck. She shuddered violently. "Hold still," he said. "I'm not gonna scalp you."

He tugged loose the thick knot of her hair. More combs and pins fell onto the cook table with soft clicks. Every muscle and nerve in her body hummed taut. Her stomach clenched so tightly she felt dizzy.
Revulsion,
she thought. Her mind might have formed a prurient fascination with this man, but at least her body had the sense to remain revolted by his touch.

He tore a fringe off his chaps and used it to tie her hair back out of her face. She imagined his hands handling her hair the way they had the rope. Expert hands, graceful. Almost gentle.

"This isn't proper," she said, the words strained by the tightness in her throat. Oh, no, it wasn't proper. Allowing him to touch her, even in innocence. Because he... because she...

He stepped back and took a good gander at her, head to toe, the hardness of his eyes and mouth flattening all expression. She felt indecent now standing before him with her hair hanging free and loose down her back, merely tied back with a piece of leather. But then, the man made her feel hot and disheveled even when every pin was in place.

She tore her gaze away from his and jerked around to face the cook's table. The half-peeled potato in her hand was turning brown in the heat. Bright drops of blood lay scattered like ripped rose petals on the scarred wood. The knife handle was sticky with blood. It bewildered her for a moment until she felt a throbbing pain in the heel of her hand. At some time she must have cut herself.

She heard the scuffle of his boots as he left, and she pushed out a pent-up breath that lifted her breasts. Throughout the afternoon the men were always riding back to the camp to pick up a fresh horse and cool off at the water butt. But she knew he'd come here for another reason entirely. To torment her.

He left a deep stillness behind him, broken only by the whirring katydid. She tossed the potato into the camp pot. She ventured a peek over her shoulder. He hadn't left after all. He stood next to the cookfire, his gaze fastened on her and a strange, dark tension sharpening the harsh bones of his face.

Caught fast by his staring eyes, like a rabbit in a sudden wash of light, she groped behind her for the burlap sack and another potato... and the world erupted into a kaleidoscope of sound and movement. The katydid whirred again. Rafferty's hand flashed, shooting fire. A whistling wind pressed against her ear. The sack exploded. Pieces of burlap and potato hit her in the chest and rang against the iron camp pot. Clementine screamed and flung her arms up to cover her face and head.

He came at her. Smoke wisped from the muzzle of his revolver. She backed up with a hard jerk, knocking into the table. He stopped in front of her, the gun pointed at her chest.

She gasped, sucking in a deep, rattled breath. "You tried to kill me!"

His laughter startled her so much, she flinched. "If I was tryin' to kill you, Boston, you'd be dead."

He poked the gun barrel into the remains of the potato sack. With his free hand he picked up what her eyes first saw as a thick piece of rawhide rope. Not until he held it up before her face did she see that it was a snake.

A large snake. With scaly olive-green skin marked with rows of round brown spots, and a tail of hard, horny rinds that fit one into the other. The head was missing, shot away by Zach Rafferty's revolver.

Another scream burst from her throat before she could stop it. She leaned as far back as she could, away from him and the snake, until the edge of the table pressed painfully into the small of her back. She wanted desperately to run, but he had her trapped.

He held the snake pinched between two fingers, swinging it before her wide, unblinking gaze. Her fingers fluttered up to her cameo, where her pulse beat fast in her throat. She realized what she was doing and forced her hand down to her side, clenching her fist. She tried to suck in a deep breath, as if she could retrieve her composure from the very air. "Take it... away," she said.

He clicked his tongue against his teeth. "Nasty, ain't it? Eleven rattles."

It was only a snake, she told herself. Well, a rattlesnake, but it was dead. She refused to let the man taunt her like this. She wouldn't give him the satisfaction.

She straightened, lifting her head. "Eleven rattles, Mr. Rafferty? My, my, I am impressed... to discover that you can count past your fingers."

A half smile played upon his lips. "Just another one of my
small
talents, and if you keep strikin' at me with those venomous fangs of yours I just might shoot you after all, like I did this sidewinder. Or maybe..." he drawled as he holstered his gun, the words thick as the sorghum syrup Gus poured over his flapjacks, "maybe I'll kill you Indian style. Slow and quiet."

So quickly her mind barely registered the motion, he pulled a wicked-looking knife out of a sheath inside his boot. She jerked backward as the long, pointed blade flashed in the sun and barely missed slicing off her nose.

He slit the belly of the snake instead. A black liquid oozed out of it to drip in the dirt. Her jaw ached from clenching her teeth, and her muscles from trying not to shudder. She stared up at him wide-eyed, trying to prove that she was brave, that she could take anything he and this country flung at her and not cower or whimper or plead for mercy.

He stared back at her for so long, the world became swallowed by the pounding thunder of her heartbeat. Yet she would not break before him, she would not.

His glaze slid away from hers, and a corner of his mouth twitched in what could almost have been a spasm of regret. "Ah hell, Boston, I shouldn't..." A faint band of color darkened his prominent cheekbones. "This skin'll make a nice band for your hat. And the meat fries up tasty."

"Then eat it yourself. And if God is kind, perhaps it will poison you."

As soon as the words were out her mouth she wished them back. They had sounded so petty and mean. He tossed the snake carcass onto the table among the bits of potatoes and the ruins of the burlap sack and spun away from her, muttering a foul word beneath his breath.

She stared at the rattler and thought of the biscuit-colored hound left half blind from a snakebite. Crude and violent the man might be, but he had saved her from such a fate, if not from death. Breeding tells, her mother had always said, and her breeding did not allow for poor manners or ingratitude.

"Mr. Rafferty?" It came out scratchy and uncertain. She cleared her throat. "I must thank you for saving my life."

He turned around. He still had the knife in his hand, and he looked as wild and savage as any Indian of her imagination, especially with his mouth set cruel and hard, and his bronze eyes glittering in the shadow cast by his hat brim.

"Forget it." He wiped the knife on his chaps and slid it back into his boot. "It was a prairie rattler anyway, not a diamond-back. Like as not you wouldn't have died even if he'd bitten you. Not with someone around to suck out the poison."

"Still, I must insist."

His hat brim tilted up like a quirked eyebrow. "You
must
insist? Bossy little thing, ain't you? All right, then, I accept your apology."

"Apology! Since when does a polite expression of gratitude become an apology? You're the one—" She stopped, suddenly aware that he was teasing her. Not taunting her, but teasing her, the way a friend might do. The thought flustered her.

They looked at each other, and a silence stretched between them that was fraught with shifting emotions as treacherous as quicksand. She hated and feared him, yet she felt an odd, forbidden exhilaration at the very thought of him.

The spell broke as Gus came galloping into the camp. Rafferty sauntered over to meet him, and they talked, too quietly for her to hear. Once his gaze flashed back to her, and she snapped hers away so fast she made herself dizzy. Yet she remained uncomfortably aware of him until he mounted Gus's horse and rode out of the camp.

She looked at the snake... prairie rattler. She ran her finger along the scaly skin. She expected it to be slimy like a fish's. But it was dry and smooth and cool and felt much the way she imagined the barrel of a gun would feel.

Gus came up beside her and blew out a soft whistle. "That's quite a beauty. Do you want me to finish dressing it out for you?"

She swallowed around a cottony dryness in her mouth. Her belly hummed with a terrible excitement that had to do with snakes and guns and a man quick and deadly enough to handle both. "Mr. Rafferty is quite a proficient shot."

"He can drill a hole in a silver dollar from two hundred yards away."

She heard pride in Gus's voice and a gruff affection. She looked at him, at his open, sun-bright face. She felt a rush of fondness for him so strong and full it made her heart swell. She had been so unfair to this man, her husband, blaming him for her own failed expectations. Blaming him for the betrayal that was Montana.

She laid her hand on his arm. "Gus... I'm sorry about forgetting to make the sourdoughs and for getting sick during the branding." He turned to look at her, but she averted her face. "I fear that I will never make a good rancher's wife."

"Aw, Clementine." His arms came around her, familiar, strong. "Do you think I care so much about those blasted sourdoughs?" He cupped her cheeks and looked into her eyes. "It's enough that I have you, girl. That we have each other."

Her head fell forward and she burrowed her face into his chest. She pressed against the soft red plaid flannel of his shirt, feeling more than hearing the steady beat of his heart, breathing in the smell of him, of woodsmoke and cow and hard-work sweat. For all of his dreaming ways, Gus McQueen was of the earth, root-bearing and elemental in the way of the earth. Not empty and vast and raw like the sky. He did not frighten her or call to her or stir those lonely places deep within her.

"It's enough that we have each other," Gus said again.

She buried her face deeper in his chest, shutting out the sky.

CHAPTER 10

Sparks from the cookfire spiraled into a late afternoon sky that was the deep blue-gray of gunmetal. The wind had come back up, chasing away the dust and carrying with it the homey scent of coffee and burning cottonwood. In the quiet of the roundup's evening camp, Clementine could almost forget what had come before: the grit and the heat. And the violence.

Hampered by her skirts, she sat on a stump. Gus sat on the ground in front of her, his back braced against her knees. He rubbed the bottom fringe of his mustache while he studied his tally book, trying to estimate how many cows had been lost to winter storms, predatory animals, and Iron Nose's rustling.

The others used their saddles and bedrolls as backrests. Pogey and Nash kept up a steady stream of blather, spiking their coffee from a whiskey flask when they thought Gus wasn't watching. Zach Rafferty sat apart, smoking and cleaning his gun.

Nash had seized onto the subject of rattlesnakes and was worrying it to death like a terrier with a rag bone. "I've heard of sidewinders holing up in some funny places to get outta the sun," he said, "but a sack of potatoes sure do beat all. Now, your soogan's a much more likely place to find a snake when you least want him. i recall a time in Missouri during the year of the great grasshopper storms—"

"Hold on, now," Pogey interrupted, thrusting his feet toward the fire, "let me stretch out my legs so's you can pull em both."

"'S God's truth," Nash proclaimed, making a cross over his heart. "'Twere back in 'fifty-nine. Them hoppers were so thick that summer they'd chew on anything green. One old woman walked out her soddy wearing a green dress, and they ate it off her down to the skin." He chuckled and scratched his grizzled jaw. "Now, a body can think by the sound it makes that a big-winged grasshopper is a rattlesnake. So after hearing snakes day in and day out and finding nothing but hoppers, you can't fault me for becoming complacent. One night I crawled bone-yard-tired into my soogan without first checkin' for snakes, and durned if I didn't hear a hissin' noise. More of them grasshoppers, I think to myself... till I feel something a-slitherin' cold up my belly." He paused to glance around the cookfire, collecting his audience like a tentshow preacher.

"Was it a rattlesnake?" Clementine prompted, to oblige him. She rested her elbows on her thighs and hid a smile by cradling her chin with her clasped hands.

"You bet your last bit 'twere a rattler. A diamondback seven feet long if he were an inch, and fangs on him thick as a wild pig's tusks. I'll be blamed if that snake didn't curl up tight as a lariat right atop my chest and go to sleep. There I lay hour after hour, the sweat meltin' off me like hot tallow. Come mornin' he wakes up—me, I ain't slept a wink—and we're staring eyeball to eyeball and I'm figuring I'm so close to bein' a dead man I might as well take up harp playing..."

The prospector paused again, awaiting his cue. In the silence Clementine could hear the tinkle of the remuda's bell mare and the low chorus of cow parlor talk: cud chewing, grunting, and blowing over contented stomachs. "So what did you do, Mr. Nash?"

"Bit off his head before he could bite me!" he exclaimed, slapping his knee. His large putty-colored eyes twinkled at her. "Them was in my younger days. I was quicker then."

Pogey, who'd been following this recital with a pained look on his face, rolled his eyes heavenward. "Shee-it... oot. The only thing ever been quick about you is your tongue. And something else I won't mention, but which the ladies at the Best in the West can all attest to."

Nash's cheeks colored brightly, and the others all laughed except Clementine. She didn't know what was so funny, but she wasn't about to ask.

At the thought of the saloon and the sinning that went on there, her gaze sought out Mr. Rafferty. His long fingers moved over the oily metal of his gun almost lovingly. He must have felt her eyes on him, for he glanced up. For a moment he stared at her in that darkly intense way of his. Then a corner of his mouth curved into a slow smile that indented the faint dimple in his cheek. And caught her like a blow beneath the ribs.

She snapped her attention away from him, yet the pain in her chest lingered. Her head fell back and she stared wide-eyed at the sky. A single star twinkled in the vast emptiness. In another hour or so the heavens would be as thick as clotted cream with stars. Out here they burned so bright and close it seemed she was not under them but among them. A star herself, caught fast by the dark night.

"Looks to be a quiet night," Nash said.

"Quiet for who?" Pogey retorted. He ripped a piece off his tobacco twist and plugged it into his cheek. "Your snoring could give away our camp to a dead Injun."

"Well, if'n he wasn't dead already, the smell of you would sure nuff kill him."

"You sayin' I stink?"

"Whiffier than a dead skunk."

Pogey lifted his arm and sniffed at his stained armpit. He shrugged. "I can't smell nothin', and what's to worry about anyways? We ain't had us a good Injun scare in these parts in so long I've forgot what it feels like. Time was when them Black-feet were the meanest Injuns living. Time was them Bloods woulda lifted your hair soon as look at you. They've had the starch taken outta them by smallpox and firewater and the army, though. Pride's mostly all gone now."

At the talk of Indians, Clementine had stiffened. She couldn't seem to overcome her fear of the painted devils so luridly described in the yellowback novels she'd read as a child. She glanced up to find Mr. Rafferty's eyes on her. She lifted her chin. "I expect you've seen a lot of Indians in your time, Mr. Pogey?" she said.

Pogey's chest swelled and his cheeks puffed with air, but Nash jumped in first. "If you're lookin' to consult an expert on the subject, I'm your man. Now you take your Salish, they're pretty much peaceable savages, whereas your Crows are thievish and sassy. The Sioux can be mean as snakes when their venom gets stirred up. Take Sitting Bull, for instance. Meanest Injun I ever met was Sitting Bull. I guess you could say we was on pipe-smoking terms for a while before he took to the warpath. What he did to Custer and the boys at the Little Big Horn were not a pretty sight, let me tell you. I was there not an hour after it happened, an' what I saw plumb curdled my blood. Bodies lyin' every whicha way and all too dead to skin."

Pogey sucked in such a hefty snort that tobacco juice dribbled into his beard. "Damn you, Nash, but if you ever did half the things you claim to've done, you woulda been wore to a frazzle long before now. You ain't never been within a hundred miles of Sittin' Bull—"

Nash snatched off his hat, the better to glare at his partner. "Are you callin' me a liar?"

Pogey likewise snatched off his hat, to make the glaring contest even. "I'm saying you bend all hell out of the truth. The closest you've ever been to any Injun with any meanness to speak of is ol' Iron Nose. And the closest you ever been to
him
was to catch a glimpse of the back end of his hoss, and even then you was shakin' like a pup with a chill."

"As I recall, you was there at the time, and I didn't see any fur growin' on your brisket." Nash wedged his hat back on his head, tapping its caved-in crown, settling the argument. "Not that Iron Nose ain't one mean Injun."

"He's a mestee," Pogey explained for Clementine's benefit, "which is to say he's got white in him from both sides of the blanket. But it's his red blood that gets to boilin' when he's riled. Why, he's so mean even the Bloods expelled him from the tribe. Got his nose chewed off in a fight once, and some blacksmith fashioned him a new one. I reckon he ain't been the same ever since."

"Yup, it were losing his nose what took that particular Injun beyond the realm of ornery and into pure meanness," Nash agreed happily. "It wasn't long after he got his nose bit off that he and his kin hacked that buffalo hunter to bits right there in the cabin where y'all are living now—"

Pogey kicked him hard in the shin with his dome-toed boot. "Put a stopper in your mouth, you jughead. Can't you see ye're frightening the missus?"

So the story was true... Somehow Clementine had convinced herself it was too horrible to be possible. She could feel the pulse beating wildly against the cameo at her neck. With an effort she kept her hand from going to her throat. She would not look at Mr. Rafferty. She wouldn't give him the satisfaction.

Gus stirred, shutting his tally book and stretching as he got to his feet. He patted her knee. "Don't fret about it, Clem. Except for a spot of thieving, there haven't been any serious hostilities with the Indians in these parts in over two years."

She made herself get up and gather the dishes in the wreck tub for washing. She didn't want to go down to the river, but she had to before it grew too dark. She wanted to ask Gus to come with her, but she decided that she would almost rather be scalped by Iron Nose than parade her foolish fears in front of Mr. Rafferty.

It was darker closer to the river. Stunted willows and wild plum thickets cast shadows over the bank. The blossoming plums filled the air with their sweet scent, as did the heavy white flower clusters that Gus had said were chokecherries. Come fall, he'd said, the fruit would hang fat and purple off the trees and she would be able to make pies and jellies with it. Except that she didn't know the first thing about the making of pies and jellies.

Away from camp the evening seemed quiet, but in truth it was full of noise. Frogs croaked their love songs in a deep-throated chorus. A white-winged magpie fussed at her. The river chattered over its rocky bed. Oh, how she longed for a good soaking bath. Dust caked her face and hair; her skin itched beneath her corset ribs. It seemed she hadn't been truly clean since she left Boston. She probably smelled like the bottom of a horse's hoof, certainly strong enough to rouse a dead Indian. The thought made her smile.

She had just finished rinsing the sand from the last dish when she noticed that the frogs had fallen silent. Even the river had stopped its song. Her breath hung suspended in her throat, her ears tensed. She heard a footfall in the grass and a soft rustle of leaves. Her belly fluttered and her scalp prickled. Slowly she turned her head...

The brush crackled as it parted and a man loomed against the lavender sky. She would have pitched headfirst into the river if he hadn't grabbed her shoulder. "Careful, Boston. You're about as goosey tonight as a colicky bronc."

She lurched to her feet, nearly falling in the river again. "You startled me, Mr. Rafferty," she said, careful to keep her face composed even though she could feel heat rising in her cheeks. "But then, I have no doubt that startling me was precisely your intention."

"There you go again, putting all sorts of nasty motivations behind my poor, misguided attempts at being the gentleman. What if my intention was simply to help you with the dishes...?"

He fell silent as the willow brakes rustled loudly, this time across the river. He lifted his head, his nostrils quivering, like a hound fresh on the scent. He leaned into her, so close she felt the hot gust of his breath on her cheek. "Sssh. Can you smell him?"

She couldn't smell anything, because she couldn't breathe. And she couldn't hear much of anything, either, because her heart was now beating right up into her ears. She hated this cowardice in herself and she tried to will it away. But it seemed that fear—of Indians and wild animals, of the wind and the loneliness—was part of a woman's lot out here.

"Roachback," came Rafferty's whisper on another wash of warm breath. A shiver curled up her spine, raising the fine hair on her neck.

"What?" she whispered back, the word a tight little squeak.

He moved his lips closer to her ear. She not only felt the heat of his breath, she felt its moistness. His breath fogged her ear, like blowing on a windowpane. "Grizzly bear. Probably hungry."

She swallowed the salty taste of panic. She remembered a picture she had seen in one of Shona's novels of a great shaggy humpbacked beast with teeth and claws as long and sharp as scimitars. She had to ask it, even if he laughed at her: "Do they eat... people?"

His chin brushed up and down against her hair as he nodded. "Been known to. Most likely, though, he's after the choke-cherries."

It crossed her mind to wonder how the chokecherry trees could be bearing fruit at the same time that they were blooming. But then the willow brakes rattled again and all coherent thought fled her head. She was sure she could actually feel her heart clubbing against her ribs.

Mr. Rafferty was standing so close to her she could hear his breathing, slow and steady, while her breath came in short, scared pants. His quiet strength was comforting. She edged closer to him, her belly brushing against the hard, cold metal of the revolver at his hip.

She turned her head. His profile looked chiseled from stone. The fading light glittered in his eyes. "Your gun?" she said softly.

He turned his head. They stood so close together that the movement caused her mouth to accidentally brush his cheek. Startled, she jerked her head back.

"Wouldn't do no good," he said, whispering still, "'cept to rile him even more. Takes a double-loaded scattergun to stop a grizzly. That and a prayer—"

The willow brakes crackled and burst open. Clementine whirled to run and slammed into Rafferty's chest. His arms came around her and she burrowed into the warmth and strength of him. Into the smell of him that was Montana dust and horse and man.

He stiffened and set her away from him. "Christ," he said on a ragged expulsion of breath.

She clung to his shirt as she twisted her head around in time to see a beaver waddle across the rocky bank and slide into the water with a slap of his flat black tail. Stunned, she stared at the widening ripples in the river left by the diving beaver, until she felt Rafferty's chest rumble beneath her clenched fists and knew that he was laughing.

She shoved past him, tripping over a rock in her haste to get away. He grabbed her arms. Her muscles, that had been so tight with fear, now quaked from the sudden release. For a moment the only thing that kept her from sliding to the ground was the grip of his hands.