Reason To Believe (30 page)

"This ride is very important to him."

"Yeah, but he doesn't have to risk..." He realized that he really wanted to talk with someone tonight, and God, yes, Clara was the one. "The way I see it now, this whole thing is about living. It's not about dying."

"That's why he asks what must be done that the people may live," she said softly in the respectful tone she always used in speaking of his father.

"Killing himself isn't the answer."

"He's an amazing man. Riding up front like that, sitting up straight and tall." She turned her face to him. In near darkness her words rustled like fine taffeta. "I've watched him, Ben. The way he carries that hoop. He must get tired, but you never see him falter at all. He sits a horse almost..." Her sigh was barely audible, but in his ear it sounded as rich as her whispered praise. "... almost as well as his son does."

"Almost that good, huh?" He felt his heart swell a little as he turned on his back. "Too bad we don't have a smoke hole in here. I made a nice little fire in the tipi. He said he was cold, and that was the best I could do for him." He chuckled. "He said I
could
go out and find him a hot-blooded woman, but hell, I'm no genie."

"You found me a bathtub."

"Maybe I am a genie, huh?" He rolled to his side again, edging his face closer to the dream-scented bundle that contained his sweet wife. "If you rub my belly, I bet I could grant you a wish."

"Oh, Ben." She let slip a dreamy sigh. "How can I be so mad at you one minute and so..."

"So what?"

"So sad. You make me laugh, and then you make me... you make me want things to be the way they were, and I have to remember that they can't be that way anymore."

"Things can be different," he ventured, having spent two years dreaming up the concept. And then, as long as he'd gone that far, he suggested quietly, "They can be better."

"I can't trust you, Ben. Not over the long haul. You broke the one promise that..." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "For a woman, it's the bottom-line promise. And it's broken. It's ruined. Nothing can fix—" the naming of it caught in her throat "—a thing like that."

"Then why haven't you divorced me?"

"Because of—"

"Don't say, because of Annie. That's not fair to her. It's between you and me." He reached for her, laying his hand lightly atop the sleeping bag and her shoulder within. "I want you to be happy, Clara."

She lay still and quiet. Then, in a small voice, "Maybe
you
should divorce
me."

"I have no reason to." He moved his cold-stiffened fingers only slightly, wishing them beneath the insulated fabric. "You've got all the reason in the world."

"Yes, I do. I do."

Hearing only regret in her voice, he decided to take a chance. "Tell you what," he whispered as he located the zipper on her bag. "We'll both be a lot warmer if we zip these bags together."

She clutched hers to her chin, but the zipper was on its way down. "I can't sleep with you, Ben."

"Sure you can." He smiled in the dark, amazing even himself with his deft zipping. "You just can't have sex with me."

"As long as you understand that."

She didn't fight him, and that, too, amazed him. But, then, it was cold, and in the absence of a fire, sharing body heat made perfect sense. So he drew her into his arms.

She stiffened a little at first, but then she softened and filled in the contours of his body like melted wax, declaring on a sigh, "Your body's still so warm."

"Still alive and kickin'," he said with a deep chuckle. "I may be pinin' for you, honey, but I ain't no damn suicidal Romeo."

"I mean, your skin always felt so warm next to mine.
Compared
to mine."

"Dark colors soak up the heat, right? White reflects it. And you've got the whitest damn feet, Clara-bow. Like two snowballs."

Hers sought his in the bottom of the sack. She wiggled her toes. "I'm wearing three pairs of socks."

"I can still feel those snowballs." The low cot groaned like an old screen door as he shifted her within his embrace, turning her back to him so that he could curl around her. "It's good to hold you like this."

"Kind of awkward with these cots."

"Doesn't matter." He made one more adjustment so that she hardly touched the cot at all. He was her bed, his thigh supporting her lower body. And his lower body responded predictably.

"Ben?"

"Just ignore it. Maybe it'll go away." But it got worse when she shifted her hips. "Maybe not."

"Ben..."

"Have a heart, honey. Let the little guy sleep with us. He's got no place else to go."

She groaned, trying hard not to laugh. "He's not so little."

"Compared to what?"
Jesus, Pipestone, ruin it right away, why don't you?
"Forget I said that. I can make him behave. I swear. I put him through obedience training, and he listens real good now."

"But
you
don't. Ben, please..."

"I will," he whispered, flattening his hand over her collarbone, sliding his palm over the silk underwear that covered her from her ankles to her neck. "I'll make you feel good, Clara. Warm and sleepy and—"

"I don't want to." She lay still in his arms, hardly breathing, and he knew she was lying. But he also knew she felt compelled to say the words. "I don't want to feel good, Ben."

"Don't, then." He cupped her silk-covered breasts in his hands and simply held them. For a moment, that was all. For a moment they merely warmed to each other's touch, her breasts, his palms. He swept her hair away from the side of her neck with the side of his face and pressed his lips into the hollow behind her ear. His fingers stirred slowly, circling gradually, caressing gently, taking their time closing in on her nipples. Like a frightened doe she lay absolutely still in his arms. He sensitized her carefully, moving in on his target without rushing, anticipating the quick indrawn breath that was his signal to ply his thumbs provocatively.

"Don't feel anything when I do this," he whispered. "Don't tingle." He slipped his hands beneath her silk shirt. Her chest rose on a deep breath, drawing her breasts higher, dragging her nipples against his palms. "Uh-oh, honey, you're turning warm and tingly inside, I can tell."

She whimpered.

"Don't be feelin' good now. Don't—"

But he knew exactly what he'd started, exactly what she needed, and exactly how much it would take to satisfy her.

"I won't..."

"I know," he whispered close to her ear as he scissored her nipples gently between his fingers. "I won't ask you to. Just let me touch you, that's all I ask." He slid his hand over her softly rounded belly, remembering a time when it had been heavily round and hard like a melon. It had been like that because he had planted his seed inside her wondrous body.

His little finger strayed beneath the waistband of her long silk pants, leading the way for his other fingers. She moaned and muttered some words of exception as his fingertips crept into her crisp thatch of curls. He closed his eyes, tucked his face against her neck, and inhaled the fresh scent of her skin as he slid his middle finger along the damp cleft between her legs, carefully parting the sweet folds of her most intimate flesh. He loved the breathless way she said his name. He could feel her trembling deep inside.

"This is just for you, honey. I promise not to..."

"Not to stop." Her plea was fine and delicate, like the touch of crystal on crystal.

"Not to stop. Not to stop." His hand stilled. His heart was near bursting. "I love you, Clara. I can't stop that, either."

She stiffened. "Don't tell me that."

"It's true, I swear."

"You're a liar, Ben," she whispered desperately, her voice suddenly sodden and heavy with unshed tears. "You taunt and you tease, and you..."

"I love you," he whispered again. He knew her. He knew how to touch her and where and how much, holding her, cherishing even her curses because he could feel her fulfillment coming, coming hard and fast.

Her appeal became a reedy litany. "Ben, oh, don't. Don't do... this..." Her trembling quickened.

"Does it hurt?" He was suddenly frightened by the intensity of her response, shaken when she reached back and gripped his thigh. "Clara?"

"Yes, it hurts, it hurts, don't stop..."

He didn't. Not until she gasped and gave herself over to the pleasure. But she was crying, too.

"I'm sorry," he whispered, stroking her hair. "I'm sorry, Clara, I'm sorry."

"I hate you," she hissed. But she turned to him and held him tight, shuddering in his arms and weeping against his neck. "I hate you, Ben Pipestone, I hate you, I hate you so much."

The words cut him to the quick even though he only half believed them. Part of her hated part of him, yes, but there was more. Much more.

"Do you want me to go?"

"No!" She clung to him, her nails digging into his back. "Don't you dare."

"What can I do?" The fires of hell burned in his throat. It hurt to swallow, but that was the only way to get his offer out. "Anything, anything you ask. Just tell me, honey, what can I do?"

"Tell me it isn't true," she sobbed. "Tell me you didn't really..."

"Would you take me back then?"

She drew a wobbly breath. "I want you back. You know that."

"But you don't want any more lies, do you?"

"No." She gripped him hard, pulling on him as if to shake some sense into him. "I want you to make it not be a lie."

He sighed. "You lied when you said you hated me."

"No, I didn't."

"I know you, Clara." He stroked her hair. "You wouldn't let me touch you the way I just did if you hated me."

"Does it hurt to hear me say it?"

"Yes."

"Then I
hate
you." She rammed her head against his breastbone. "I wish you were dead. I wish I didn't have to look at you and think of you with... with someone... holding someone..." A terrible sob tore from her throat, chilling him to the marrow.
"Please,
Ben, tell me it didn't happen."

"I can't." And it was killing him, certainly deadening him. He wished he could die, or cry, or do anything but hurt her more. "I won't lie to you anymore. All I can say is I'm sorry."

She lifted her head, and he felt the warm, damp breath of her question against his neck. "Why doesn't that help?"

"Because it doesn't make it go away. Only a genie could make it go away."

A long, desolate, hollow sigh seemed to purge her. She shivered, then settled quietly in his arms. "Or a shaman, maybe," she said softly. "Could a shaman?"

"You'll have to ask Cady. Maybe he can remember back. Get in touch with his primitive self." But there was no refuge for him in sarcasm. He closed his eyes. "I'm no shaman. I'm no genie. I'm just an ordinary man. I can't undo what I've done."

"You shouldn't have done it."

"I know. Believe me, I know." What he didn't know was how she could stand to hold his wretched body so tightly in her arms.

Neither did she, but at the moment, knowing meant nothing. Feeling was everything.

"It hurts worse now than it did the day you first told me," she confided, trusting him now with her pain.

"If you want me to go—"

"I don't." The embrace of the man who'd betrayed her seemed an improbable place for any self-respecting woman to find comfort, but there it was. "I don't want to hurt alone. And I don't want to hurt with anyone else."

"Jesus," he whispered, "we make a hell of a pair."

She had not permitted herself to grieve over the loss of her husband. One grieved for the dead, not for the living. Clara had lost her father when she was in her teens, and over a stiff upper lip, she'd shed the proper tears in the proper way. She'd also had a miscarriage, but that was something she found hard to think about. So she didn't. It was the child that never was, and so it was best left buried where it was, in a never-never land in the past. Before the ride, she had done just that, without vacillating.

Before the ride, she had taken that stiff-upper-lip approach and done a lot of things without vacillating.

After spending a rest day at Green Grass, the riders moved on. A few riders left the group to return to their jobs, but many more joined in. It was in the vicinity of Cherry Creek that the Hunkpapa from Standing Rock had sought refuge with Big Foot's Minneconjou band a century ago. Upon hearing of Sitting Bull's murder and of the troops that had been dispatched to hunt down the Ghost Dancers, Big Foot had decided to move his band of about four hundred south to Pine Ridge, where Red Cloud and his Oglala people would offer them sanctuary and much-needed food.

So, too, did the twentieth-century Standing Rock riders arrive near the old campsite. At the small community of Bridger, South Dakota, they were joined by riders from Pine Ridge and Cheyenne River Reservations. There were also a few more non-Indians and a shuffling about of the media. More vows were made. More speeches were given. More people publicly took stock of who they were, where they were, and where they wanted to go.