Untamed (8 page)

"No, wait." Half-afraid she might be right, Daniel grudgingly agreed to an examination. "Go ahead and look, but this time be careful. I've had just about all a man can take for one day.''

"Baby," she muttered as she hunched over his head.

Daniel might have come up with a snappy reply, but by then, Josie's full breasts were rubbing against his shoulder as she worked, making him all too aware that they were unbound, free of the corset he'd heard white women wore beneath their clothing. Aware of a sudden and surprisingly urgent response in his groin, Daniel strategically draped his hands across his lap as Josie parted his hair—this time with her fingers.

"Ugh," she said, grimacing as she peered at the wound. "What a mess."

"How bad is it?" he asked. "Did you blow some of my brains out?"

"No, you fool. It's just a little messy, a scratch that's hardly worth sewing up."

"How can you be so sure?" Daniel recalled the endless list of tasks she claimed she could not perform, despite the decent poultice she'd made for his leg. "I thought you didn't know anything about nursing wounds and such."

"I don't," she said, climbing off the bed. "Tending to something as insignificant as this must be instinctive. Hold still a minute. I'm going to get a rag or something to help stop the bleeding."

Josie made short work of cleaning and patching him up after that, and even donated a strip of her petticoat, figuring it was the cleanest thing in the cabin with which to bind the wound. It was. Thanks, Daniel assumed, to the accidental shooting, her defiant attitude had also undergone a welcome transformation. In fact, Josie seemed most agreeable, a situation he figured he'd best take advantage of while she still felt that way.

"I'm about starving to death," he said, urged on by his growling belly. "I also feel kind of weak after being shot in the head and all. Think you could rustle me up some flapjacks?"

Daniel could see that a refusal was perched on the tip of her tongue, the automatic response he'd come to expect no matter what was asked of her. After that moment's hesitation, however, she surprised him.

"I suppose I could try. How do I make them?"

Directing her to the shelf above the stove and the bin of flour beside it, Daniel gave her step-by-step instructions that culminated in a reasonably edible meal. The flapjacks weren't particularly light, but not too bad for someone untrained in the culinary arts. He'd warned her to keep a close watch on the cakes as they cooked, but somehow Josie managed to burn them anyway, frying them to a deep charcoal color that matched the layer of soot covering her face and clothes. He'd been meaning to fix that stove pipe for a while now, but with the busted-up leg and all, hadn't quite gotten to it.

"Who put this stove together?" she asked irritably, eyes glowing through soot like a cat's in the dark. "Whoever did it ought to be shot."

"You've already taken care of that," Daniel said, drawing the first burst of laughter from her. It was a pleasant sound and made him feel comfortable enough to add, "Why don't you drag up one of the chairs and eat with me?"

She hesitated, looking at him cockeyed for a moment before grabbing a chair and settling in next to the edge of the bed with her plate. "I do have a couple of questions about you and Long Belly, if you don't mind."

Daniel couldn't think of anything to do with their relationship that would make him uncomfortable, so he gave her free rein. "I don't mind a bit. What do you want, to know?"

"For one thing, you two call each other brother. You don't look that much like brothers—are you?"

"We're not related by blood at all. My wife was his sister, so he's my brother-in-law. We've been calling each other brother since the wedding."

"You have a wife?" She said it as if finding a woman to marry him had been a miracle.

"Had," he snapped. "She died a couple of years ago."

"Oh." Head bowed, Josie generously added, "I'm sorry."

"No need to be."

Obviously eager to move onto a new topic, she asked, "Is that why he doesn't listen to you, even though you are the agent in charge of his tribe—because you're not Cheyenne?"

"Oh, but I am." Daniel supposed he ought to be insulted by her insinuations, and in some ways he was, but most of what she assumed was true. Crunching his way through the remains of a flapjack, he said, "He probably only half listens to what I tell him because I'm only half Cheyenne."

"Then you two were raised together?"

Daniel shook his head. "I never even met Long Belly or the other members of the tribe until they were rounded up and sent to this reservation a few years ago—you know, after that Custer mess at the Little Big Horn. That's when I decided the Cheyenne needed my help more than the soldiers did."

He paused there, waiting to either see or feel her revulsion over the fact that he was aiding the very band of cutthroats who'd helped annihilate the white man's fair-haired general. It took less than a minute for her to come through with a properly offended expression.

"I'm not sure I understand what you're saying." Josie's mouth was pinched and her cute little nose tilted upward. "You mean that you and Long Belly actually took part in Custer's defeat?"

Daniel was sorely tempted to answer in the affirmative, to claim that yes, he and Long Belly had fired the fatal bullets that ended the general's life, but instead, he hit her with the truth.

"Long Belly's family was there, camped on the Little Big Horn, but he wasn't much more than a boy back then and didn't participate in the battle. I was still scouting for the army at the time, though not for the Seventh, and helped Mackenzie's troops locate and nearly annihilate the Cheyenne camp a few months after Custer's defeat."

Josie's expression softened dramatically and her eyes lit up. "Then you must be some kind of war hero."

Daniel smiled, but an ache filled his throat that started from his heart. "That depends on how you look at it—through white or Cheyenne eyes."

His appetite gone, Daniel dropped his plate on the bed and thought back to the revelations that made him the man he was today. That was back when he first realized that the military had figured out that one of the quickest ways to bring Indians under control, and thereby dependent and subject to the white man's regulations, was to destroy their main source of survival and independence—the buffalo. To his everlasting shame and horror, Daniel, along with his father, took part in the destruction of the great bison herds, at least until he realized what was happening to his own mother's people. By then, it was nearly too late.

Leaving those details out, he explained, "It wasn't until after a large group of Cheyenne were sent back here to starve to death that I decided they needed and deserved my help more than the army did."

"Starve to death?" Josie dropped a bite of flapjack back onto her plate. It landed with a hollow clunk. "But how can they be starving to death here in these mountains, of all places? Surely these people know how to hunt."

Trying to hang on to his private feelings on the subject, Daniel said, "It's impossible to hunt game that's been slaughtered to extinction by your enemies, the way the buffalo and antelope have been here in these mountains."

"There's no game left?"

Daniel shrugged. "A couple of elk and deer, I suppose, but they're few and far between. Sometimes the Cheyenne resort to picking off a few head of stray cattle from the ranches along the Tongue River—and that, as you might imagine, doesn't set too well with the ranchers. That's one reason Long Belly and I are trying to start up our own cattle ranch. If we do well enough, we plan to turn it over to the tribe."

Josie considered all this a minute, then frowned. "I still don't understand how they can be starving with all the supplies you bring them on behalf of the government. I know several white families that could have used a little free flour last winter."

"They're welcome to it," he said, barely hanging on to his temper. "Of course, to qualify they have to have been driven at gunpoint off the land where they were born and raised, then agree to live under conditions that make them sick and to adapt to ways of life they detest, such as farming. Oh, and they also can't complain when the government breaks promises and treaties, or when it expects them to suffer quietly at the hands of crooked traders and white horse thieves. And forget about religion as you know it—they have to change all those beliefs, too. Still think you know some white folks who deserve free flour?"

Daniel suspected he'd gone a little too far even before Josie grabbed his plate off the bed, then flounced over to the counter and dumped the remains of both their meals there. When she marched over to the table and glanced out the window, he thought she might even try to make a break for it.

She didn't, but surprised him by completely ignoring the previous subject to ask, "If this is a cattle ranch, where are your cattle and hired hands?"

As happy as she for the change of topic, Daniel laughed as he said, "We're just getting a start in the business. Long Belly is my hired hands."

Turning back to him, Josie asked, "Then why is he off chasing buffalo that aren't there instead of tending the herd?"

In no mood to get back on such a personal level, Daniel made quick work of his explanation. `Buffalo have always provided food, lodging, tools, and other goods to the Cheyenne, and are the most worshiped animal in that tribe, second only to their God, Heammawihio. Since Long Belly can't fill his people's bellies just yet, he dreams of finding at least one living buffalo to fill them all with hope."

Her expression thoughtful, Josie nodded, and then went back to staring out the window. After that, the morning and afternoon flew by as Daniel dragged himself outside to tend the livestock with his surprisingly cooperative assistant, Josie, by his side.

Not only did she muck out the stalls without complaint, she didn't even balk when he filled a wheelbarrow with fresh pine logs, and asked her to push it back to the cabin. Whether she realized he was laying in supplies against what could be one hell of a storm, he couldn't say. All Daniel knew for sure. was that scattered snowflakes had begun falling at noon, and if the darkening clouds were any indication, his ranch would be covered in at least a foot of snow by morning.

That night they ate a supper of ham and leftover flapjacks, as Daniel thought of them. Although Josie continued to do pretty much what he asked of her, as the evening wore on, he could sense a little of the former defiance creeping back into her manner. He went so far as to complain about his aching head, holding it and moaning like the baby she'd accused him of being, but even that performance wasn't enough to bring her back to a contrite, fairly obedient female. What little remained of Josie's agreeable nature abruptly vanished about the time she crawled under Daniel's blanket. Then, once again, he found a lodgepole pine lying next to him.

"So, Josie," he said casually. "I realize it wasn't your idea to come here and all, and that whatever Long Belly paid, it probably wasn't quite enough for all you've been through. How much more do you want to take the starch out of my hide?"

Beside him, incredulously enough, she grew even stiffer. "What is that supposed to mean?"

Daniel cleared his throat and reached for her. "I was hoping to buy a little of your time. It's been a while since I've known the feel of a woman."

She slapped his hand away the minute it touched down on her breast. "It's going be a lot longer if you're counting on me to ease your suffering. Now shut up. I'm tired and need some sleep."

By the next morning, Josie wondered how much longer her own belly would let her hide her considerable cooking skills. Though she'd intentionally burned the pancakes just to make sure that she wouldn't called on to cook again, she found to her chagrin that even she couldn't stand them. Her sensibilities were also offended enough by the mess in the cabin that she considered tidying the place up a little. Then again, it could be a waste of time. Cleanliness may have been next to godliness, but Josie thought that maybe this cabin was too ungodly to ever be clean again. Maybe if she stayed outside more, she wouldn't notice so much.

Taking Daniel's heavy coat from the rack, Josie slipped into it, and while she was at it, helped herself to his deerskin boots. They were thigh-high moccasins with fringed flaps that were more than big enough to pull on over her shoes.

"I'm going out back to use the privy," Josie announced over her shoulder. "Is there anything I should do for the animals while I'm outside?"

"Well, you could milk the cow, if you don't mind, and maybe toss a little hay to the horses. Everything else should be all right until tonight, unless you want to trouble yourself to look for eggs."

Josie kept both her smile and her delight to herself. "Oh, all right," she said with a forced sigh. "I'll do what I can."

Then she opened the door and stepped out into a thick, invigorating blanket of glistening snow. Daniel's boots proved to be surprisingly warm, even though Josie did have to stop now and then to pull them up, but they kept her dry as she trudged to the outhouse and then to the barn, all without spotting a bear, thank the Lord. She'd left the gun an the table where she'd dropped it, too skittish after shooting Daniel to even think of touching it again so soon.

When Josie finished tending the livestock, she took a few minutes to just stand out in the cold and breathe the frosty mountain air. Unlike her mother, who had bundled herself from head to foot at the first sign of fall, Josie thrived in cooler temperatures. She came alive at the first flurries of snow, her pulse racing through her body with renewed vigor, and felt a certain bond with the out of doors each time her breath left its imprint in the frosty air.

Loathe to return to the cabin, Josie finally forced herself to collect the eggs and a half a pail of milk, then headed for the house. As she stepped across the threshold and kicked the door shut, Daniel greeted her with pretty much the same words he'd used the morning before.

"I'm starving," he said, patting his belly through a clean buckskin shirt—well, cleaner than the last, anyway. "Why don't you fry up those eggs and maybe try to make us some biscuits today. Sure would go good with what's left of that ham."