The Barefoot Bride (57 page)

"The Roman goddess of love and beauty. I named her this morning. It's a wonderful name, and in the words of the great Cervantes, 'A good name is better than riches.' You don't mind that I named her Venus, do you? I had Psyche, the name of Cupid's wife, picked out too. And Persephone, queen of the underworld, was another of my choices. But that's sort of like the queen of hell, and I didn't think it was appropriate for—"

"Venus is fine, just fine," Sterling interjected. "When did you get up?"

She added a smooth pebble to her brew and continued stirring. "I get up before Apollo, that old rooster over there," she said, pointing to a scrawny bird that looked to Sterling to be about a hundred years old. "He's named after the Greek god of the sun, you know. A fitting name, I think, since he gets up with the sun."

Sterling glanced at the sky and reckoned it was about noon. "I'm normally up with the sun, too, but I was so tired last night, I didn't even mind sleeping on corn husks with Snig, Snag, Snug, and a toad."

"Toby," Chimera said, and threw a small hair into the caldron. "Pig hair," she explained. "We used to have a pig. His name was Pierpont, but he ran away. And as for Toby—I've told those boys that frogs belong outside, but they insist on sleeping with the warty thing. It's beyond me why anyone would want to sleep with something that croaks, but—"

"The toad's name is Toby?" Sterling grinned and dipped his hands into a bucket. "Did Toby used to be a man? One you turned into a toad?"

Chimera watched Sterling swish his hands around in the bucket. "Uh, Sterling—"

"A man who was bothering you, perhaps?" Sterling continued merrily. "Pestering you until you'd had enough? I can see it now, Chimera. He wouldn't leave you alone, so you cast a spell over him and presto! Toby the toad."

"Sterling, about the bucket. That's—"

"Would you do the same to me, sorceress?" Sterling asked right before he brought his hands toward his face.

As the liquid he held splashed toward him, he knew without a doubt it wasn't water. But it was too late. His hair was already streaming with it, his face thoroughly doused also. He froze, disgust washing over him just as surely as was the foul liquid he'd just bathed in.

Chimera clapped her hand over her mouth. "Oh, Sterling, that's..."she mumbled from behind her fingers. Removing her hand from her mouth, she pointed to her pitiful vegetable garden. "Rabbits. They've eaten almost everything I've planted."

Sterling looked back down into the bucket. "That's liquefied rabbit?"

"Rabbit?"

"You said—"

"Oh, no, Sterling, you don't understand. I'm making a potion that's supposed to keep rabbits out of the garden. The bucket holds... well, you see, the recipe calls for a bit of cow... Now Sterling, don't get upset. It'll wash off."

"What
will wash off?
What,
exactly, is—"

"It's cow tinkle," she said as quickly as she could.

He shuddered and tried to quell his pitching stomach. "So you collect cow
tinkle.
How interesting," he said, anger overcoming his queasiness. "And what have you got in that bucket over there on the porch? Snake spit perhaps?" He walked closer to her.

She backed away. "You've no right to be angry at me," she said, trying to remain calm, no easy task with Sterling looming above her, his eyes flashing silver fire. "I didn't
invite
you to have your bath in cow—"

"No, you didn't," he agreed, still stalking her. "But neither did you tell me it wasn't water in that bucket."

"I... I tried to, but you kept interrupting!"

"So I'm rude. But if you couldn't get a word in edgewise, the least you could have done was kick the bucket over. An action like that would certainly have gotten my attention!"

Her backward escape route was halted when she ran into a tree. "Kick it over! Do you realize how hard it is to get Athena to relieve herself in a bucket? It's hard enough to get her to let down her milk, but to get her to let down her—"

"All right! Just show me where you
do
keep water, and—"

"I've always wondered why Aunt Xenia named that cow Athena," Chimera mused aloud, and looked at the sway-backed bovine. "Athena is the Greek goddess of wisdom, and that cow has never shown much intelligence. I always thought a good name for her would be—"

"I don't give a blasted damn what the cow's name is, Chimera! Show me where I can bathe!"

"Well, there's the horse trough over there," she said, pointing to a falling-down container.

Sterling glanced at it and strode toward it.

"But there's no water in it," Chimera called to him.

He stopped but didn't turn. The muscles in his back tensed as his anger mounted. "Then why show it to me?"

"Well, what I meant to say was that you could bathe there if it had any water in it. It used to hold water, you know. But one day Snig threw Snag into it. Then Snug came out of nowhere and leaped into it too. Then Snig decided to join the others, and with Snig, Snag, and Snug in the trough... well, it broke. Now it won't hold water. In fact, it won't hold anything but spiderwebs. I was going to haul it off into the woods, but when I saw the spiders had egg sacs, I left it alone.

It's extremely bad luck to harm spiders, you know, and—"

"Chimera." Sterling fought his fury as he turned to face her. "You have a very irritating habit of changing the subject. Now forget about rabbits. Don't give another thought to spiders or egg sacs or bad luck. Just concentrate on one very simple question. If you had just had a bath in cow...
tinkle,
where would you go to wash it off?"

"Well, let's see... if it was winter, I'd wash in the tub in front of the fire in the cabin," she informed him as she sashayed back to her caldron and took hold of the stirring stick. "If it was autumn, I'd—"

"It's summer! Where would you wash in the summer?"

"Why, in the stream, of course. Everyone knows the best place to wash in the summer is a cool, clean stream. 'And pomp, and feast, and revelry, with mask, and antique pageantry, such sights as youthful poets dream on summer eves by haunted stream.' John Milton." She reached for a few dried lizard tails. "I didn't kill these lizards, I'll have you know. Snug killed them. I was mad at him for such a long time, but then I figured that since the poor little things were already dead, I might as well make good use of them." One by one, she dropped the tails into the bubbling concoction.

Sterling struggled to contain the urge to grab her and throw her head-first into her damn caldron. "And just where is this cool, clean stream, might I ask?"

"Why, it's right over—" She broke off, her eyes lighting up when she saw flies were swarming around him. "Would you mind catching a few of those flies for me? Fly murders don't bother me in the least. Most times I can figure out
why
various creatures exist. I mean, most of them serve some purpose on earth. But I can't for the life of me understand what good flies do. Do be a sweetheart, Sterling, and catch me about three of them. They're not for this potion, but you snore. When I heard you snoring last night, I remembered I had a recipe for a potion that keeps people from snoring. I've never made it, but—"

"Where's the damn stream!" He stormed toward her, but before he reached her she had Venus in her arms.

"Sterling, when are you going to take that bath?" she demanded. "You smell atrocious. Venus is liable to throw up her breakfast if she gets a whiff of you. Now step away from her!"

Sterling backed away obediently, but he'd forgotten the steaming caldron directly behind him. Its heat seared through the seat of his breeches and branded his backside. Red-hot pain sped through his frame.

"Oh, my!" Chimera yelled. "Sterling, for heaven's sake, go get in the cool stream!"

"Where the hell is it?" he shouted back at her.

"I told you!"

"You did not tell—"

"I did so!" She frowned and put a finger to her lips. "Didn't I tell you? Oh, well, it's about twenty paces into the woods behind the barn. Of course,
my
twenty paces might not be the same as
your
paces. With your long legs, it'll probably only take you ten paces to reach—"

"Estas loca!"
he blasted, and turned toward the falling-down barn.
"Completamente loca! Totalmente loca!"

His Spanish confused her, but she was determined not to let him have the last word, whatever that word was. "Oh, yeah?" she yelled at his retreating back. "Well, the same to you, but
double!"

He stopped and felt an involuntary smile crawling across his lips. As if it were a tangible thing, he could almost see his anger leaving him. And in its place he felt rising laughter. He'd told her she was completely, totally crazy, and she'd unknowingly told him he, too, was crazy. Double crazy.

And maybe he was, he mused. After all, in the fifteen or so hours he'd known her, she'd had him hanging from a tree, nursing a baby, bathing in cow tinkle, burning his backside, and for some reason beyond his comprehension, he was seeing the
humor
in it all. His shoulders shaking with laughter he was no longer able to contain, he shook his head and headed for the creek.

Chimera watched him until he'd disappeared. "He's a very strange man, Venus. Not at all your normal, typical knight in shining armor. But I suppose," she ventured as she laid the baby back down in the basket, "I can do something about that. With as many witchcraft books as I have, surely there's an incantation in one of them that will turn a crazy person into a sane one."

*

Snig, Snag, and Snug knew they were completely hidden behind the thick brush. Through parted branches, they watched Sterling bathe.

"Think we can reach his pants?" Snig whispered. "This stick ain't very long."

"Gimme it," Snag ordered quietly, and grabbed the twig from his brother. Slowly, silently, he slid the stick through the brush toward where Sterling's breeches lay. Slipping the end of the twig under the pants, he pulled them toward the brush that hid him.

When the triplets had the breeches, they buried them in the hole they'd prepared. "Now he ain't got nothin' to wear," Snug said softly, and grinned.

"Yeah," Snag whispered. "Now he'll have to leave. He can't go near Chimera with that wet noodle of his hangin' out like that." Satisfied their scheme would work, they scampered away.

Sterling looked up from the stream and wondered what he'd heard rustling through the woods. He saw nothing, and the sounds soon faded. It was probably just a squirrel or some such. Still, with Snig, Snag, and Snug on the loose, he couldn't be too careful.

He walked out of the creek, shook the water off himself, and searched for his breeches. "Hell," he mumbled. "I could have sworn I left them—"

The demons. Dammit, they'd stolen his pants! His gun belt! Had they filched that also? He raced to the tree branch from which he'd hung it, and was relieved when he saw it still hanging there.

Well, now what the hell was he supposed to do? If he called for the monsters, they'd never come. Calling for Archibald would be useless; the boy was shut up in the cabin, poring over those piles of books of his. And there was no way in hell he'd call for Chimera. She'd probably laugh herself into fits. That or quote some stupid quote having to do with nakedness, and he was in no mood for any of that. He took a deep, furious sigh.

But the breath he'd taken rushed out of him at the explosion of gunfire. Thoughts of Chimera still in his mind, he wondered if maybe she'd gotten hold of a gun and blown her fool head off. He yanked down his gun belt, buckled it around his bare hips, and raced toward the cabin. As he neared it, his guns slapping against his naked thighs, he heard loud voices.

"Where is he?" a man demanded.

"He left," came Chimera's brave reply.

"Without his horse?" the man asked.

"He gave me his horse because I don't have one. I only have Pegasus, and he's a—"

Another gunshot broke off the rest of what she said. Sterling crept around the side of the barn and peered around the corner, sure he'd see that Martha woman's father, Otis, and the other men who'd been chasing him yesterday. But after a quick glimpse he knew the four mounted men in the yard were not his hunters. The speaker of the group, he saw, had a large streak of white running through his dark brown hair. The unforgettable characteristic convinced Sterling he'd never seen the man before.

Two of the men had their guns drawn, and the other two fiddled with knives. Chimera faced them. Sterling had to give her credit; she didn't seem at all afraid. Her shoulders were squared, her chin lifted, supported by all the defiance she possessed, and her fingers were tapping the backs of her arms in an impatient manner.

"I told you he isn't here," she said calmly. "Now please leave. And tell Everett Sprague for the last time that I won't yield to his threats."

The man grinned. "Well, if he ain't here, then there's no one to stop us from havin' a little fun, is there, boys?" he asked his cohorts.

"Nothing but my magic," Chimera informed them sternly.

The men chuckled. "We were out here a few days ago, and we watched you," the man with the streaked hair said. "We seen you chantin' over that pot, and we heard tell you're a witch. But lady," he said, leering at her, "we ain't seen none of them magic brews of yours do nothin' stranger than smell up the air." With that, he lifted his pistol again, aiming it directly at her heart. "Now, before we get down to Sprague's business, let's get down to business of... another kind. Take off them clothes."

Sterling's Colts were in his hands before he thought to put them there, his fingers wrapped around each trigger. But before he got a shot off, Chimera raised her arms shoulder level. Her fingers wiggled. Her eyes closed. She began to sway.

"Oh, damn," Sterling muttered under his breath. "They're going to shoot her for the harebrained maniac she is if she does that moronic magic of hers." He leveled the barrels of his pistols at the two men who had guns. "Chimera, shut up," he whispered.

But Chimera's breasts rose as she took in a deep breath and began her still-to-be-invented incantation. "Fangs of raiders... teeth of shark. Bad men flee... lest you begin to bark!"