The River Nymph (20 page)

His hands cupped her buttocks, guiding her up and down, until she found the rhythm, improvising on it with rolls and twists
of her hips that left them both breathless. “Woman, you’re a natural-born rider,” he gasped raggedly, his fingers pressing
into her hips to stop her before he lost control.

“Please, don’t stop,” she found herself begging, and knew there was desperation in her voice.

“Anythin’ you want, love,” he replied, beginning to thrust upward slowly once more, freeing her hips so she could follow his
lead. His hands cupped her breasts, thumbs circling and teasing the nipples. She was a glorious sight from any angle, but
especially this way. “Let’s just take it slow, easy. We want this to last….”

And it did. Each time she began to shudder in culmination, he stilled and held her hips, letting her glide off alone, watching
as her head fell backward and a deep rosy flush tinted her body. Finally, with sweat beading his body and face, he clenched
his jaw, the sight of her breaking his intense concentration. “I can’t…wait…any longer, darlin’…. Hang on
…for…the…ride…of…your…life!”

With those desperate words, he began to buck and thrust, waiting for her to begin another climax. When he felt the soft, tight
heat of her body again convulse around his staff, he let go with a low, rough cry, echoing her sudden gasp of pleasure.

Delilah flew beyond the vastness of the starry sky outside, yet at the same time was completely centered on the man joined
with her. How that could be so, her mind could not encompass during each surge of blinding ecstasy, especially once he gave
in and followed her to surfeit. As his staff swelled and released its seed deep within her, she did not—could not—think at
all. She only felt.

At last, utterly spent, she collapsed on his chest and nestled her head against his shoulder. She could feel one of his hands
gently gliding through her tangled hair while the other lay possessively across the curve of her derrière. His breath came
in ragged gasps as did hers, and his heart pounded like a drum in his chest. They lay for several moments without moving.

Finally she stirred, lifting her head as she climbed off him. But Clint did not let her go. One arm wrapped around her waist,
pressing her to his side. She seemed to fit so naturally there that she relaxed and let him continue to hold her. Then he
reached down and pulled up the covers. The night air was suddenly chilly now that their passion had been spent.

“I shouldn’t stay. Sky or Uncle Horace might knock on my door,” she protested.

“Not until mornin’. I’ll tuck you in your bed safely at dawn.”

They lay contented for several moments. Then, sleepy yet emboldened by yet another new experience in making love, she said,
“I never imagined a woman could…that I could…so many times.” She could feel the slight rumble of a chuckle in
his chest.

“What? No credit for my stamina?” Before she could make an indignant reply, he said, “You’re a passionate woman, love. You
respond wonderfully.”

“I never imagined that a woman could be on top.”

“Top, below or any other way. No matter what position, with us it’s pure magic, Deelie.”

“There are more ways than a man or a woman on top?” The words tumbled out before she could stop them. Delilah knew her face
must be red, but she looked up at him, more curious than embarrassed.

He smiled at her innocence, brushing a long strand of dark hair from her cheek as he replied, “Oh, there are lots and lots
of possibilities and, er, other things I’ll show you. It’s a long way to Fort Benton and back.”

After he reached up and turned down the light, she snuggled against his side once more, envisioning the weeks ahead and all
the delights of new discovery. Before she could consider the price she might pay, sleep claimed her.

After the layover in Bismarck, the
Nymph
pushed on. Delilah dreaded the day after next when her new friend, Sky Eyes of the Ehanktonwon, would leave them. Her father,
Talks Wise, had arranged for a party of kinsmen to meet them at a small fort within a day’s ride of their reservation. As
far as Delilah was concerned, the timing could not have been worse. There was so much to ask Sky about Clint, so much she
wanted to know. But perhaps it was best this way. The magic interludes at the pool and in town, even what lay ahead for them
as lovers, all would end in a few brief months. Upon returning to St. Louis, she would buy out Clint’s share of the boat and
he would return to Eva and the Blasted Bud with a handsome profit on his initial investment.

“You look pensive,” Sky said to Delilah as Bismarck vanished on the horizon. A smile lit her blue eyes. “Was last night as
wonderful as the afternoon at the pool?”

Unable to resist Sky’s uninhibited glee, Delilah grinned. “Let’s just say it was even better in a bed.”

Sky clapped her hands together and gave a shout of joy that was drowned out by the noise of the engines, but several of the
crew did look up to where the two women stood on the aft section of the boiler deck, hugging each other.

Unaware of their audience below, Sky said, “Now I’ll be able to leave and not worry about my brother. You will be good for
him, Delilah.”

Delilah knew she meant
be a good wife,
but said nothing to disillusion her friend. “We have a long way to go before we sign marriage lines,” she equivocated.

“Oh, I don’t know. One member of the party coming to meet me at Berthold will be a priest—or so my father says. He could marry
you tomorrow.”

Delilah paled. “No—that is, we can’t rush this. Clint’s a man who can’t be pushed.”

“And you’re a woman who is just as stubborn as he is. That’s why you will deal so well together.” She sobered. “My sister
loved him and he her, very much, but he must remain in the white man’s world now. And that means having a white wife. No simpering
finishing-school girl would ever suit him.”

“I suspect Eva St. Clair is more to his taste,” Delilah said before she thought, then realized her gaffe. “I mean—”

Sky laughed. “Oh, you mean that woman at the Bud. I know more than my brother could imagine about his life in St. Louis. Clint
would never marry her—and now that he’s met you, I know he’s not once considered bedding her.”

Delilah looked dubious. “There’s a very good reason for that. She’s well over a thousand miles away.”

“No, silly goose, I mean before we even left the city. He never touched her. Not that she didn’t try to lure him back. She
was really miffed when it didn’t work.”

“How on earth would you know that?”

A beatific smile wreathed Sky’s face. “I overheard Clint talking to Banjo Banks the day before we sailed—you remember Banjo?”
At Delilah’s rather dazed nod, Sky continued, “Well, Clint was giving him instructions about running the Bud while he was
gone and Banjo asked him why Eva had been so foul-tempered with everyone for the past weeks. Clint tried to hedge around the
subject, but Banjo can be quite persistent when he wants to know something, especially if it concerns the saloon.”

“He actually told Mr. Banks that he hadn’t…”

“Yep,” Sky replied with a satisfied smirk. “Oh, he wasn’t happy about confessing it either, let me tell you. You should’ve
seen his face when Banjo asked if that had anything to do with you.”

“Of course he denied it,” Delilah said with a smirk of her own.

“Of course.”

In spite of the inner voice cautioning her that the idea of a permanent relationship with Clinton Daniels was madness, Delilah
could not stop herself from hugging Sky again. Both women giggled as if they were fourteen-year-old girls.

When they reached a wide curve in the river late the following day, the remains of Fort Berthold’s guard tower became visible
upon the shallow bluff on the east side of the Missouri. Clint and TalksWise, using post and telegraph, had settled on the
deserted fort as a safe meeting site. It was a good distance from white army officials and marauding Indian tribes, yet only
a few days’ ride from their lands. Sky’s father had led a large party of her kinsmen and women, as well as the missionary
serving on the reservation. With a clergyman to act as intermediary, they would have a safer journey if they ran into any
army patrols. Sky was ready to begin a new chapter in her life, standing between red and white worlds.

Delilah and Clint watched as the captain skillfully maneuvered the boat to the shore. It was several hours before sunset,
but they would lay over here tonight to have a farewell feast with the Ehanktonwon. She watched him scan the vast open horizon
past the dilapidated remains of the fort. “Do you miss it?” she asked, wondering again about his violent past and how great
a hold it had on him.

He did not reply for several moments. “Some of it, yes…” The reluctant tone of his voice and posture indicated that he
did not wish to discuss the topic.

Delilah did not press. “I see a campfire and people up on the hill,” she said, squinting in the bright afternoon sunlight.

“They’re preparing the feast. Still a few buffalo around for the taking. They’re probably roasting the hump.” He turned and
looked at her. “Guess you’ll get your first real taste of the West. Not quite like Luellen’s cookin’.”

“I understand it’s rather like beef,” she said, not at all certain she believed it. At least they weren’t boiling dogs in
pots! She’d overheard crewmen speak of that practice too.

Clint shrugged. “Beef tastes like beef. Buffalo tastes like buffalo. And nothing tastes like chicken but chicken.” Then his
expression changed when he saw a tall man dressed in buckskin breeches climbing down the steep embankment to where the boat
would moor. “Stands in Water, my brother!” he called out, and the greeting was returned.

The warrior’s fringed buckskins were similar to the ones Clint had on, but his upper body was bare except for a breastplate
made of quills. His hair was long, worn in two shiny plaits decorated with beads and feathers. Large gold hoops adorned his
ears. Delilah looked at Clint and for the first time noticed, among his other scars, that his earlobes had once been deliberately
pierced.

While he and his adopted brother called out to each other in the Sioux dialect, she considered how easily he could revert
to being one of these people. He’d worn such primitive adornments and lived this life. Once they’d left behind the dubious
elements of civilization in Bismarck, Clint had immediately returned to his buckskins. She could imagine his shaggy hair untouched
by a barber’s razor, braided in the fashion of the Sioux tribes, his body bare save for loincloth and moccasins, his face
marked with stripes of vermillion war paint.

“He could be one of them again. Don’t let him, Delilah.”

Delilah turned, hearing Sky’s voice, and was shocked at the transformation in her friend. Miss Sky, who had read law inSt.
Louis, was now Sky Eyes, daughter of Chief Talks Wise of the Ehanktonwon. Her hair was parted in the center and wound in plaits
at the sides of her head. She, too, wore large hoops in her ears and a buckskin tunic, elaborately fringed and worked with
beads and quills. Under the long tunic her legs were encased in moccasins, knee-high and beaded to match the rest of her clothing.

“My, you look like a princess,” Delilah said, shocked at the transformation from finishing-school lady to Indian.

Sky laughed. “There are no Indian princesses. That was just a term the first white settlers used for the daughters of our
chosen leaders.”

“You’re dressed for riding tomorrow?”

“No, this is purely ceremonial for the feast tonight. I’ll wear an ordinary tunic with leggings and lace-up moccasins, but
not this fancy. It takes our women weeks to work the beads and quills into ceremonial leathers—not to mention the backbreaking
amount of labor that goes into tanning buckskins to get them this soft.”

“It’s lovely. You’re lovely,” Delilah said. And she meant it. When she reached out, Sky hugged her in return.

“We’ll have more time together. I know it in my heart.”

“Well, since there’s a telegraph near where your people live, every time we make a trip upriver, I’ll wire ahead and we’ll
plan to meet,” Delilah said, only praying that it would be possible. She refused to consider whether Clint would be with her.
He had already gone ashore and was surrounded by a group of Ehanktonwon.

Sky waved to her father and several of the women, who excitedly returned her greeting. “Come, meet my people.” She took Delilah’s
hand and they climbed down the stairs and headed for shore. But just as they reached the top of the gangplank, Sky stopped
to stare at a white man wearing a clerical collar and dark suit. Although Clint was a tall man, the fellow towered above him.
He was young, with rusty reddish hair and warm brown eyes. The laugh lines at their corners and the wide smile on his face
indicated that he was agentle giant. He held his hat in one hand and made an elegant bow to the women.

“Oh, my, who is that great red bear?” Sky whispered with a gulp.

Delilah smothered a chuckle. It was obvious that her friend was smitten. “Love at first sight can be quite a trial,” she said
dryly.
So could lust!

Chapter Sixteen

Your
foster father is indeed a wise man, just as his name implies,” Delilah said to Clint while they stood at the back of the boiler
deck, waving to the assembly on the shore as the
Nymph
pulled out into the current following two days of feasting. A lump formed in her throat as she watched Sky, her father and
the others grow smaller in the distance.

“You mean because Talks Wise advised me not to try livin’ Indian again.” His expression was unreadable as he stared at the
vanishing figures.

Delilah watched his profile, wondering what he was thinking. Had he taken Talks Wise’s words as a rejection? She did not know
what the two men had discussed after they’d left the feasting late last night. At first she’d assume it was about Sky and
Father Will, the young Episcopal priest who served their reservation. But later she learned that the old chief had cautioned
Clint about returning to his former life, reminding him that he had built a new one in the white world and could serve the
Ehanktonwon people best by remaining a respected businessman aiding Sky with legal connections in St. Louis.

He remained silent, staring into space for several moments. At length, she said, “Sky and Father Will certainly seem taken
with each other. I suspect we’ll be hearing about a wedding within the year.” She blinked, then asked, “Oh, I wonder—can a
clergyman perform his own marriage?”

Clint rewarded her question with a quizzical smile. “Yeah, I noticed the way they were huddled together, too. He’d be an asset
dealin’ with the government. As to the marryin’ part, I reckon it’s possible. Sky’s spent too much time with whites not to
want marriage lines, all proper.”

Left unsaid, Delilah knew, was any mention of their own situation. “Sky also expects that we’ll marry. I had a difficult time
explaining that neither of us wants that.”

He snorted, half laughing. “She came to me last night, riled as a mama bobcat with new kittens. Tellin’ me I was taking advantage
of you.” He looked down at her, watching the wind blow her curly hair, partially obscuring her face. “Well, am I, Deelie?”
he asked in a husky voice.

“No, Clint. We have an understanding,” she replied calmly. Then, to cover her own unease, she added, “Besides, I’d never marry
a man I couldn’t trust not to steal my boat.”

He threw back his head and laughed.

Rising early had become a habit since Captain Dubois blew the whistle at dawn each day as warning before they left the shore.
He was tireless, always early at his place in the wheelhouse, studying charts and measuring them against what the river’s
new twists and currents revealed to his keen eyes. Breakfast was usually brought up to him by the boy, Currie.

Delilah rubbed sleep from her eyes. It had been a week since they’d left Sky and her family. They had crossed from Dakota
into Montana Territory. In spite of rainstorms, tornados and boiler break-downs, they were making good time. She watched as
a big slope-shouldered roustabout carried the captain’s tray up to the wheelhouse. She wondered idly why Currie had not performed
this task, but one of the crewmen approached her with a tally discrepancy on the buffalo hides that they’d purchased from
Sky’s people. As clerk, it was her job to check, so she spent the next hour searching until the last of the cured skins were
located.

Then she started thinking about the winsome boy who wanted to be a pilot. Had he fallen ill? The lad was devoted to his duties
aboard the boat and would never shirk any assignment. She went in search of him on the main deck.

“Where’s Currie? Why didn’t he take the captain’s breakfast to him?” she asked Todd Spearman when she found him in the kitchen,
flirting with Sadie, the pretty Irish cook’s helper.

Todd’s ruddy face appeared puzzled. “He picked up the tray, same’s usual, a couple hours ago.”

“We have to find him,” she said without further explanation. Obediently, if reluctantly, he left Sadie kneading bread dough
and followed his boss lady around the deck until they located Currie with Zeke Hagadorn, the second pilot, who was teaching
the lad how to take depth readings with a lead-weighted line.

“Why didn’t you take Captain Dubois’s tray up to him?” Delilah asked.

Currie’s eyes grew round with alarm. “I started to, honest, but Lew Flowers, that big rooster, he said capt’n ordered him
to do it. I…I slipped on the steps ’n spilled some coffee in his eggs yesterday. Lew said the capt’n was powerful mad,”
the boy stammered, rubbing one foot against his ragged pants leg.

“That doesn’t sound like Captain Dubois. I’m going to ask him about this,” Delilah replied.

Zeke and Todd nodded in agreement. Jacques Dubois would never be short with a boy for such a simple mistake. Carrying a tray
up the ladder when the boat hit a shift in current could often result in a mishap. She headed for the wheelhouse, but when
she called up to the captain, she received no reply, nor could she see him through the windows that wrapped around the small
room. A sudden premonition of unease swept over her.

When she opened the door, she found him holding onto the wheel, struggling to reach the whistle, no doubt to stop the boat.
His normally café-au-lait complexion was ashen. Delilah tried to yell for help, but the noise of the engines drowned her cries.
What was the number of blasts for pull to shore? She began to yank on the cord, sending a frantic cacophony of whistles, sure
to call attention.

Below, Clint heard the racket and ordered the engineers to stop the boat and drop anchor in deep water. Then he tookthe stairs
to the boiler deck two at a time and raced to the wheelhouse. He saw Delilah at the door, a look of grave alarm on her face.
He was up the stairs before she could finish saying, “Captain Dubois is unconscious, gravely ill! We need Mr. Hagadorn to
pilot the boat to shore.”

“I’ll carry him down to his cabin. You send for Ha-gadorn,” Clint said, kneeling and hoisting the smaller man over one shoulder.
She scrambled down the stairs, with Clint moving more carefully behind her.

By the time she reached the stairs to the main deck, she remembered Currie and the big rooster who’d taken the breakfast tray
away from him. “Riley’s man!” And Currie was with the second pilot right now! She reached into her pocket for her Derringer.
Since the incident with Riley’s assassin, she’d taken to carrying it with her at all times. She hiked up her skirt and raced
down the steps in the most unladylike fashion imaginable, then ran toward the back of the deck, where she’d left the second
pilot with the boy.

Zeke Hagadorn was nowhere to be seen but the burly roustabout had Currie cornered between the wall of the engine room and
the hog chains. “Now it’s yer turn, ya little turd,” Lew Flowers said, lunging forward and grabbing hold of the boy’s shirt
collar as the nimble youth tried to slip past his far larger foe.

“No, it’s your turn, Flowers,” Delilah yelled just as the deafening noise of the engines began to abate.

The giant turned around without relinquishing his hold on the boy. Instead, he threw Currie overboard and advanced on her
with a feral growl, big yellow teeth showing when he laughed at her small pistol. She fired point blank, though not at his
chest, which might not stop the brute quickly enough. Instead, she aimed for the bridge of his nose.

Delilah did not miss.

With a look of amazed consternation twisting his features, Flowers collapsed backward as blood spouted from his ruined face.
He crumpled to the deck. She screamed, “Man overboard! Man overboard!”

From above, Clint heard the shot and her cries as he laid Dubois on the bed in the captain’s cabin. Turning to Todd Spearman,
he said, “Fetch Luellen and have her bring Mrs. Raymond’s medical kit from her cabin.”

With that he dashed out the door and leaned over the railing near where he heard Delilah’s voice. She was pointing to a head
bobbing in the swift current about a dozen yards off the port side. He yanked off his boots and gun belt, then vaulted the
rail. At this stretch of river the bottom was uncharacteristically deep. He only prayed it was deep enough for him to come
up without breaking his neck—or miring himself in silty mud while the crewman was swept to his death.

With her heart pounding madly, Delilah watched Clint leap from the upper deck.
Please let it be deep enough!
She could see the boy growing smaller in the distance as he struggled ineffectually against the strong, swift water. But Daniels
surfaced quickly and stroked powerfully downriver. In moments he reached Currie and began swimming slowly back toward the
stopped boat.

“Zeke Hagadorn is missing,” she said to Horace, who had heard her screaming and rushed to see what was wrong. “I think this
offal—” she shuddered, pointing to the dead man at her feet—“must be responsible. He threw Currie overboard.”

“Riley’s man, no doubt,” her uncle said, quickly assuring himself that she was unharmed.

Horace immediately ordered several of the crewmen to lower the yawl over the side and begin searching up and down the banks
for the second pilot. Delilah and Todd assisted Clint after he swam to the boat with Currie. They pulled the boy over the
railless, foot-high side of the main deck while Clint hoisted his dripping body beside them, panting from the exertion of
the swim.

“Zeke Hagadorn’s missing,” she said to Clint.

“He…h-he k-killed ’im, ma’am,” Currie hiccupped, gulping for air and coughing as he pointed to the dead rooster. “He
sneaked up back of us with a b-blackjack ’n split his skull, then shoved him overboard afore I cud do anythin’.”

“You all right, son?” Clint asked. Currie nodded.

Clint looked at Delilah. “How did you—”

“I was suspicious when Flowers took the captain’s breakfast tray away from Currie. I suspect he put poison of some kind in
the food.”

“Luellen’s taken your medical kit to his cabin. Best you help her tend him,” he said, peeling the soaked shirt from his broad
shoulders.

Any other time she would have stood transfixed at the sight, but now she turned quickly and did as he told her, eager to get
away from the bloody corpse. She had known when they tricked Riley and took the
Nymph
into the upriver trade that it would be dangerous. But she had never imagined watching men die, much less killing two herself.

When she reached Captain Dubois’s cabin, Luellen looked up at her. “Capt’n don’t look too good, but he says he’s gonna be
at the wheel tamorrah.”

“Lew Flowers must’ve poisoned your meal after taking the tray from Currie,” Delilah explained.

“I hate to give a backhanded compliment, but I am most grateful you served grits this morning, Mrs. Colter,” Dubois said.
“I detest them so ate very sparingly—and your normally excellent coffee tasted a bit off. I took one taste and no more.”

Luellen slapped one plump knee and chuckled. “Reckon I’ll recomember not to serve yew grits no more, but I shore am glad I
did this mornin’.”

“Just to be certain you’ll not suffer any lingering effects from the poisoning, let me check your tongue and eyes,” Delilah
said, opening her medical kit. She turned to the cook. “Please brew a tea from these herbs,” she said, handing Luellen a cloth-wrapped
packet. “It’s a soothing aid for digestion. Some plain bread would be good, too. That is,” she asked Dubois, “if you think
you can hold down solid food?”

“
Mais oui,
anything to get out of this bed. Have Mr. Ha-gadorn restart the engines. We have all day to run and hours before we reach
the next wood stop.”

Delilah explained about Zeke, whom she knew the captainhad worked with for many years. “My uncle has the crew searching for
him, but Currie said he was thrown in the water after a strong blow to his head.”

Dubois’s eyes grew hard with anger. “In this stretch of the river, so wide, so deep…” He sighed in resignation.

But in spite of their fears, Zeke Hagadorn was located clinging, semiconscious, to a sawyer nearly a mile down the river.
Although Delilah had to put seven stitches in the gash Flowers had made on his head, he appeared little the worse for his
ordeal.

“We were very lucky,” Delilah said to Clint when all the commotion had died down.

“
You
were very observant. If you hadn’t been suspicious of Flowers and gone looking for the captain, we could’ve lost him, most
certainly would’ve lost Hagadorn and Currie. Probably wrecked the boat and lost half the crew and passengers to boot.” He
looked at her with genuine admiration. “You’re one hell of a partner, Deelie.”

Visions of Flowers’s ruined face flashed through her mind. She hugged herself. “I never imagined having to kill men to survive.
Is that the way it has to be out here in the wilderness, Clint?” She searched his face, which had grown expressionless…all except for the graying of his pale blue eyes. She knew that he was remembering the tragedy Sky had told her about.

The stars shone brightly that night, countless millions of pinpoints of light. Mr. Hagadorn had been able to guide them to
shore for the night’s berthing. Now both he and the captain slept, recovering from their respective ordeals. Although she
was grateful both men were mending, Delilah’s thoughts were not on the
Nymph
’s near brush with disaster but on Clint and how he’d looked that afternoon.

She waited for several hours, making certain her uncle was soundly asleep before donning her wrapper and leaving their quarters.
Starlight illuminated her way down the deck to Clint’s cabin without need for a lantern. She paused for amoment before she
knocked softly, praying no one would see her out this late.

For what seemed like an eternity there was no answer. Just as she was about to slip away, Clint opened the door. He was barefoot,
practically naked, wearing only a short robe that draped open, revealing his chest. She was certain he had nothing on beneath
the blue cotton. His expression was once more unreadable as he extended his hand and she placed hers in it so he could pull
her inside.

“I wondered if you might come to me tonight…no, I hoped you would, Deelie,” he said, closing the door silently.