Rocky Mountain Man (Historical) (8 page)

“A man already dead cannot die again.”

“True.” Her thin mouth pursed, bracketed by lines made deeper by the shadows. “I know who you are. What you are.”

“You sent her away.”

“Betsy?” The crone's smile was a dark one. “I did. You are as good as dead to her.”

“Then you told her.”

“You're a monster. There's no other word for you, and in my opinion, the law was too soft. It's all the bleeding hearts that think a monster ought to have more rights than the poor innocent young woman you destroyed.”

“I didn't—”

“Oh, don't you play that hand with me. I'm wise to men like you. I know what you are. I say ten years wasn't near enough for what you did. I would have let
you hang, and that would have been too good for you.” Adelaide Gable had known sorrows her own mother would not acknowledge, and it was all she could do not to be rash and go against her own beliefs. “It would have been simple to let you die. Just to have let your wounds seep until they festered. Let gangrene take you, and believe you me, that's a bad way to die.”

Duncan squeezed his eyes shut, forcing away the memories and the smell that over twenty years later still made his guts fist with nausea. He could taste the bile building, feel the quiver of his diaphragm.

“Betsy is a good girl. The best. She's the apple of my eye, I'll tell you that, and everyone who knows her loves her. You—” Her finger stabbed like a bone against the center of his chest where the last claw marks ended.

Fire consumed him and between the pain and the memory, he felt his abdomen clench. He would not vomit. He refused to give the old woman satisfaction.

“You want her. I can see it.”

“N-no.” It wasn't like that. The old woman would never understand. Ever. The tiny glimpse of brightness Betsy had somehow left began to fizzle like a candle in a cold, hard wind. He wasn't strong enough to hold the wind back and to protect the flame. He'd never hurt Betsy, he would never hurt any woman, but Betsy, she was like the noon sun, bold enough to warm the world.

“I can only thank the heavens above you didn't try to hurt her before this—”

“I d-didn't—”

“She thinks you're dead, and you listen up. If you want to live, you'll leave it that way. There's no reason for her to come out here. Not to pick up and launder a
dead man's shirts. Do you hear me, you beast? If you know what's good for you, you'll stay dead.”

He wanted to hate the old woman, like a demon shivering in shadows and hellish light, her narrow face taut so that she looked to be all but eyes, teeth and bone. His mouth was filling, his body trembling, he could feel the violence gathering in his fisted stomach.

“But if you don't, on my grave, I'll tell her everything. Is that what you want?”

Betsy would look at him with hate in her eyes, like this woman, her grandmother, someone she trusted. Someone she'd believe without question. He remembered the sound of her tears, he remember her words,
Thank you. It is so little for such a great deed. You are my only hero.
No one had ever said such things to him. It hadn't mattered how he'd treated her, shame filled him at the memory. He'd only been trying to drive her off, to keep himself safe, but all he'd done was be cruel to a truly good woman.

No matter how vicious he was to her, she was irrepressibly cheerful, and he hated it and nothing, nothing would stop the agony of seeing Betsy, who'd held him in her lap and cried, pushing him away. Repulsed. Hate-filled. Seeing nothing but a monster.

Oh, no.
The force was gathering inside him. Pain, worse than any he'd known, blackened his soul, roaring up from the bottom of his spirit, tearing through his body, filling his mind. The realization made sweat break out anew. He'd never see Betsy again. Never need to hide out in the forest or in his workshop during her weekly visit. No more grumbling. No more abrasive fury. No more sunshine yellow dresses and charming smiles.

Bile flooded his mouth, his abdomen jerked, his head lashed and physical pain made his eyes fail. There was only blackness and burning fire and desolation as he became sick, turning his agonized body to the side of the bed. Shame filled him.

Drained him.

 

Betsy wished she could stop crying. It made no sense to weep for a perfectly not-nice man. No, no one with a lick of common sense would be choking on sorrow at the thought of never again seeing the scowling, growling and vicious-mannered mountain man. But all she could think about was how vulnerable he'd looked in death, and sorrow clawed through her like an eagle's lethal talons.

He wasn't such a bad man. No, not at all. For all the times she'd dreaded driving into the far-reaching cloud of his hate that hovered over the forest like a fog, she would give anything to have him alive. Alive to scowl at her and to spit and hiss like a cornered mountain lion whenever she arrived a bit too early or late with the laundry delivery and caught him by surprise. Or like last time, when he hadn't even been expecting her. He'd come to her aid like a real hero. She pushed her face into her hands, sobbing, more agony shredding her until she was like a spider's web blowing in the wind, unwinding.

The gentle sounds of the night did not calm her. She let the tears fall and they kept rising through her in hot, twisting sorrow as the moonlight washed through the open window to gleam like a pearl on the lacy curtains and paint the intricate pattern of the lace onto the pol
ished wood floor. The warm wind puffed through the mesh screen and brought with it the smell of ripe apples from the orchard and honeysuckle sweetness from the trellis where the vines clung to the sides of the house. The near silent glide of an owl cut through the moonlight and flickered a total brief darkness onto the window.

“Don't grieve him overly much,” Joshua had told her when he'd seen her safely home. “He was no good. An outcast. He lived far away from decent people for a reason.”

Oh, how wrongly Joshua assumed. He saw only the outside Duncan Hennessey. Her least favorite customer was everything unpleasant, but she'd seen inside him to the man she'd always suspected was there. A great wounded man who would give his own life to defend a woman he didn't even like.

That was rare indeed.

She wanted to say that it was admiration and gratitude that had her crying so that tears turned to sobs that turned into a place where there were no tears. She wrapped her arms around her waist, hurting inside with the same intensity she'd felt when Charlie had died, trying to deny the simple truth. Why her heart recognized Duncan Hennessey, she didn't know.

All she knew for certain was that something had changed deep within her. That no matter what anyone said, she would always see the good in the mountain man who'd saved her. Who'd made her spirit stir.

B
etsy tried to pretend the bright afternoon sun did not scrape against her sand-rough eyes, which were sore from the past few nights' crying and from too little sleep. She couldn't help it, she was grieving the mountain man, and as she studied her long-time friends since their early days in the public grade school, she wasn't certain they would approve.

Rayna Lindsay with her expectant mother's glow as she moved with grace from table to counter, and dug for the hot pads always hidden in the back of the top drawer. Not that they were exactly hiding there, but through all the opening and closing of the drawer and the contents sliding around, and after she'd gotten done rummaging for whatever she was looking for, they always inexplicably slid to the back.

Mariah Gray had started the laundry business when her father died. Then she'd gotten married and sold it to Betsy and rented her the house, too. Mariah, a take-charge kind of woman, took it upon herself to grab enough plates from the sideboard. “You still look
worse for the wear, Betsy. Sit. Relax. You look so fragile.”

“I should say so!” Rayna stepped around a bag of laundry to lift the boiling coffeepot from the stove. The heat it gave off made it much too scorching to sit in the kitchen, so she carried the pot between the rows of bagged garments that lined the inside of the kitchen to the door.

The screen hinges squealed as she shouldered the door open and paused to tsk. “Betsy, I can't think of what a harrowing ordeal that must have been. And to think you came away from a bear attack with little more than a few scrapes.”

“And easily mended.” She held up her hand. Already the skin was healing over, red and tender but healing well beneath the bandage. “My mother forbade me to work. She was terrified I'd get a festering from my hand being in wash water all day and they'd have to cut my arm off to save me from gangrene.”

“Your mother has an imagination.” Rayna politely said the only thing she could before twisting out of sight, leaving the screen to bang shut behind her.

“An imagination, ha!” Mariah scooped up forks to go along with the dessert plates and spoons for the coffee. “Your mother is so headstrong, she makes me look like a wish-wash. I'm proud of you for sticking to your guns. You are doing a great business. I've heard nothing but compliments.”

“Goodness, I sure try, but it isn't easy.” She'd gotten behind after the buggy wreck. The vehicle had been towed to the livery but there was no telling if it could be salvaged.

Her kitchen was crammed with ironed laundry freshly folded, stacks of stiff, dried garments yet to be sprinkled and ironed, and the huge bags of laundry she'd picked up just this morning, blocked the lean-to door. Her friends had come, since she'd missed their usual weekly afternoon gathering, and this time it was her turn to host. She'd been glad enough that she'd been able to whip up a cake in time.

“Joshua is insisting on driving me everywhere. He's a cautious driver and it took forever to come back from the west plains. He's going to put me out of business.” She lifted the pedestal cake plate, carefully holding it steady—it was such a lovely thing—and let Mariah hold the screen door for her.

“Do you think it's intentional?”

“I know it is.” Betsy waited while Rayna moved aside the coffee cups to make just enough room on the small coffee table for the cake plate.

It looked so pretty next to her china. A gift from Charlie she would always cherish, the pattern of butterflies soaring above cheerful sprays of flowers was just right. She reached for a cup now, slipping into the wooden rocker and cradling the scorching hot cup, not caring that it stung her fingers. Not caring at all.

The blue and yellow butterflies reminded her always that life went on, from caterpillar to cocoon to butterfly, and then on to the next life, which had to be more beautiful yet.

It was hope, and she clung to it, for Charlie's sake and now for Duncan Hennessey's.

Rayna stirred sugar into her cup and pushed the delicate sugar bowl across the little table to Betsy. “Joshua
is a big brother. Of course he's going to protect his baby sister, even if she is over thirty years old.”

“And widowed, self-sufficient, independent and a businesswoman to boot!”

“Oh, I can see you're frustrated.” Rayna sympathized and began to cut the cake. “All I can offer you is a slice of your own cake. It's temporary, but it is comfort.”

“Angel food cake. It is comforting. So sweet and light and spongy.” Like hope. Betsy sighed. She thought of the man she'd left still and lifeless in the mountain cabin. She felt drained of hope. Nothing seemed to make sense like it did before. “My family worries and frets, but the truth is, I'm a grown woman. If I were married with a family of my own, like James, then no one would be knocking down the fence to see what I'm up to.”

“Does your mother still want you to give up the business and move in with her?” Mariah took the sugar bowl, dumped three teaspoons into Betsy's cup.

“You know she does. I love my mother, but I can't live with her.”

“A saint couldn't live with your mother.” Mariah meant it in a kind way, but the truth was the truth.

Mother
was
difficult, there was no denying it. “I haven't been able to live with her since I was fifteen. She's bossy and wrong at least half of the time. When I lived with her after Charlie's death, you remember how I was. As crazy as a loon.”

“We remember.”

“Ten times a day it was ‘Betsy, a decent lady does not let her ears show.' ‘It's not eighteen thirty-two,
Mother!' ‘Betsy, a decent woman doesn't sit with her knees gaping.' ‘Mother, my knees are half an inch apart, not three feet and gaping while wearing no drawers in the middle of Pearl's House of the Red Curtains.'”

“Or simply on the bench outside the mercantile,” Rayna added dryly, and they all burst into laughter.

“She went on like that all the live-long day. Without end. The woman was like to drive me mad. Until finally I reached the point that if I'd stayed much longer, I'd have gone running screaming down Main Street with my skirt over my head and my drawers showing. And here Mama was worried about my knees!”

Rayna laughed so hard she had to put down the cup. “That would have ruined your reputation for sure.”

“Yep. Everyone would have said, ‘Forget it, take Betsy Gable Hunter off the marriageable widow list!'”

“But everybody knows your mother,” Mariah pointed out. “You still may have saved some of your reputation. You know, tarnished, but still marriageable.”

Betsy sighed, no longer laughing. “Yeah, everyone knows Lucille Gable is a proper woman, but she pecks like a vulture.”

“She means well, at least you have that. My mother didn't,” Mariah sighed.

Reminding Betsy how fortunate she was. “Exactly. My mama would crawl to China on her hands and knees if it would make me happy, but she is headstrong and I love her much better when we are under separate roofs.”

It was the way her family was. All of them. From the aunts and uncles, grandparents and cousins. Nosy, every last one of them. Always getting involved in one
another's concerns. But at least it was done out of love. It was just one of those facts of life that love wasn't always soft and mushy and gooey. Real love took grit, and it wasn't easy to love someone no matter what in spite of their imperfections, but that was one of life's challenges.

And the good part was that her family loved her the same in return, even if she was independent-minded and stubborn. Boy, could she be stubborn and sentimental. Lord, was she!

That overwhelming sentiment began to build up when she looked at the fluffy angel cake topped with powdered sugar and drizzled with strawberry syrup.

It was the strawberries that reminded her.
Oh, Duncan.
Her heart cracked wide open. She opened her mouth and it all came out. All of it. The way she'd thought it was him attacking her initially before the bear emerged from the thick foliage. How he'd come to her rescue only to be mortally wounded, protecting her. Always protecting her, even in his death.

“And he passed away, about the time I got there the other night.” She pushed the cake aside and sipped the coffee, rich and bitter; it was comforting, simply breathing in the smell of it. To let the warm liquid seep into her stomach and spread through her middle.

“How heroic.” Rayna looked thoughtful as she reached for her piece of cake, which she'd set aside to listen to the long tale. “Not many men would behave so gallantly. That's how I knew my Daniel was a worthy man. His noble honor. It sounds as if your mountain man had a great spirit, too.”

“I'm sure many wouldn't agree,” she teased, just a little, to hide what she felt too shy to say. “He was very embittered. I think he had a great sadness in his life.”

“His family was murdered, his mother, her husband and two daughters. Burned alive in their house.” Mariah shivered. “Horrendous, what some people are capable of.”

“You mean, someone did that on purpose?”

Mariah nodded. “No one was ever found guilty of murdering those poor people. Can you imagine, finding your family tortured and killed?”

Well, no wonder.
She knew he'd endured a terrible tragedy, but to be left alone in the world, by means of injustice. She couldn't blame him a bit for his anger. What was sad, though, was that no one had been left to soften his grief. To make gentle his world.

“…but that's about all I know. It happened to the south, near Great Falls. I remember my father talking about it but I can't recall any of the details.”

Mariah had laundered Duncan's shirts for many years. Before Betsy had taken over, of course. As if she were trying to remember every important detail of her time delivering his shirts, Mariah forgot her fork was suspended in midair with a bite of delicious cake.

She looked very distant for a moment. “I was never sure about Mr. Hennessey, but I tell you, he amused me. He was so taciturn. So caustic. Actually, sometimes he was really funny. He'd say something like ‘Not so much starch next time, I'm no preacher.' And I'd drive away before it hit me, the image of dour Mr. Hennessey in a stiff white collar and coat, preaching up a Sunday sermon. I can't imagine how well that would go over, un
less he deleted some of his especially vulgar swearwords.”

“I have increased my vocabulary because of him.” The tattered shreds of her heart throbbed with sorrow. “My brothers are always so gentle around me, and so was dear Charlie, that I had no notion of what Mr. Hennessey would be shouting whenever I'd drive up and startle him and he'd swing his hammer and hit his finger. I didn't know words like those existed. I had to make James tell me what they meant.

“Boy, was Duncan hard to surprise, but once, when he was pulling honey from a hive and obviously concentrating very hard, I rounded the corner quite a bit earlier than usual and you know how my old wagon rattled louder than a stampeding herd of cattle? He didn't hear me until I was almost upon him and he started, jumped and got stung. He was swatting and jumping and cursing and wouldn't let go of the honey.

“About any other man would look like a fool, but he did it with great dignity. And, somehow, he charmed the bees because they stopped stinging him and started swarming again. Very impressive. But I'll never forget the look of horror on his face when he saw me coming down his road. From his perspective he probably preferred the bee stings, and it wasn't the bees he was cursing.”

Betsy swallowed hard. “He was everything opposed to what a perfect gentleman ought to be and yet I preferred him.”

“At least he was never two-faced. He said what he meant. You can't say that about a lot of men.”

Rayna seemed thoughtful as she reached for the cof
feepot. “Betsy, I think you owe this Mr. Hennessey a great debt. When is his funeral service?”

She didn't know. “I don't know if there even is one. I only know of Mariah and I who even knew he lived out there.”

“Surely he needed supplies for the winter,” Rayna persisted, filling each cup with care. “Someone must know him.”

“I don't know if he ever came to town.” Betsy reached for the sugar bowl.

“No,” Mariah said thoughtfully. “I know he came to town a few times a year. To trade in his furs for staples, of course. But also to put his woodwork on consignment.”

Betsy forgot her fingers were holding the spoon and it slipped into the bowl. She left it, coffee drips and all, her mind skidding to a dead halt. “What kind of woodwork? Like whittling?”

“No. He makes furniture for the furniture store on Second Street.”

What kind of furniture? Betsy was dying to know. It was wrong, this interest in him. He was gone. Dead. Probably buried by now. But Rayna's words troubled her greatly. She might be one of the few people who even knew him. Maybe that accounted for the strange way she felt moved inside…not sexually, goodness, she hadn't thought that way for years, but in her heart. As if something had changed between them on the night of so much death.

On her way out of town, she'd convince Joshua to take her along Second and she would see for herself. She couldn't say why she felt compelled to do so. Only that she did.

The afternoon sky felt changed, although the sunshine was lovely.

Mariah felt it, too. “Looks like we'll be in for some rain.”

 

The furniture was beautiful. She knew it was his without explanation. Bold pieces, masculine and strong. As stalwart and as breathtaking as the mountains where he'd lived. As the man had been.

I never knew.
She pressed her hand against the window glass, the sounds and smells and heat of the brilliant Indian summer's day faded to nothing. Nothing but the beat of her heart, the tug of her soul. They were chairs made for sitting on a porch. A pair of deep-backed, low-slung seats made out of rich cherry gleamed like sleek marble.