Wayward Wind
Authors: Dorothy Garlock
“You’re a stubborn little baggage, and will take strong handlin’. I don’t know if I’m up to it.” Cooper leaned against the
tree, his long legs spread wide, and pressed her against him intimately. “You’d better get back to the house,” he murmured,
but his arms tightened around her even as he said the words. He kissed her throat just behind her ear. His lips moved to her
face, his hands to her hips.
Under his stroking hands, Lorna’s body went slack with sensuousness and moved wantonly against him, pressing into every crook
and curve of his body. Hungrily, blindly, she sought his mouth, and her kiss conveyed the deep heat inside her which was a
new and delicious feeling. Whatever the future held, she thought, tonight is mine. Tonight I’ll know the joy of coupling with
my mate.
“Sweetheart? We’ve got to stop—” His voice was ragged with emotion.
“No! I don’t want to! I ache for you—”
“If we don’t stop now—I’ll not be able to!”
“I’m yours. I’m your woman.”
“DOROTHY GARLOCK IS ONE OF THOSE GIFTED STORYTELLERS WHO IS ABLE TO BLEND BEAUTIFUL LOVE STORIES WHILE AT THE SAME TIME RECREATING
THE DOWN-TO-EARTH REALITY OF OUR PIONEERING ANCESTORS.”
—Affaire de Coeur
Almost Eden
Annie Lash
Dream River
Forever Victoria
A Gentle Giving
Glorious Dawn
Homeplace
Lonesome River
Love and Cherish
Larkspur
Midnight Blue
Nightrose
Restless Wind
Ribbon in the Sky
River of Tomorrow
The Searching Hearts
Sins of Summer
Sweetwater
Tenderness
The Listening Sky
This Loving Land
Wayward Wind
Wild Sweet Wilderness
Wind of Promise
With Hope
Yesteryear
Published by
WARNER BOOKS
POPULAR LIBRARY EDITION
Copyright © 1986 by Dorothy Garlock
All rights reserved.
Popular Library
®
and the fanciful P design are registered trademarks of Warner Books, Inc.
Popular Library books are published by
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First eBook Edition: August 2009
ISBN: 978-0-446-56422-9
Contents
“I want to be with you… forever.”
This book is lovingly dedicated to the memory of my mother, Nan Carroll Phillips, who loved poetry, music and all things romantic.
She may have written the poem I used in this book, “Will You Love Me When I’m Old.” I don’t know—I found it among her papers.
Come live with me, and be my love;
And we will all the pleasures prove
That valleys, groves, hills and fields,
Woods or steepy mountains yields.
—
Christopher Marlowe,
“The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
”
One
With a breathy hiss, the whip sliced through the air. It burned the man’s bare buttocks like a firebrand and beads of blood
popped out on his white skin.
“Yeeow!” he yelled as the thin leather of the whip struck him again. He reared up from the girl who was kicking and thrashing
beneath him, and the leather wrapped itself around his thighs like a serpent.
“Get off her, you… ruttin’ stud!” The whip descended again, this time striking him with even greater force as rage gave strength
to the arm of the girl wielding it. “Get off her or I’ll take your filthy hide off in strips and feed it to the buzzards!”
The man flung himself toward the gunbelt he had discarded when lust had been all that was on his mind, but the leather lashed
out again and the gun spun out of his reach. The girl in the britches and long shirt, tightly belted at her waist, sprang
from her horse and landed lightly on her feet without missing a stroke with the whip. It swished as it leaped to its target.
“Goddamn you, Lorna!” the man yelled. “What the hell’s the matter with you? Brice said I could—” He pulled up his britches
and dived for the underbrush to escape the lash. “You goddamn she-wolf—”
“Yellow-backed, belly-crawlin’ buzzard bait! All the brains you got is
there
!” She grabbed up his gun and fired into the brush. “Damn you,” she yelled. “I hope I shot
it
off!”
“Someday I’ll haul you off that horse and slap the shit outta you—” His shouted threat was drowned out by the sound of the
second shot fired from his gun.
“You’re not man enough to haul a sick pup off a horse, Billy Tyrrell! Hear me?” Lorna grasped the gun by the barrel and flung
it far out into a tangle of briar bushes. She heard the man’s strangled bellow of fury and glimpsed him darting behind a curtain
of cedars.
“Did he hurt you, Bonnie?” She turned to the girl who sat unanswering on the ground with her arm over her face, the bulge
of her pregnancy obvious beneath her thin dress. Lorna knelt down beside her. “Does Brice know that polecat’s after you?”
she asked gently, her voice belying the fury that almost choked her.
Bonnie lowered her arm and looked at her. Her eyes were dry, dull, and reflected a hopelessness that tore at Lorna’s heart.
“Brice sent me down here knowin’ that Billy’d be here.” Her voice sank to the thinnest thread of sound.
“Oh, Bonnie.” Dark, violet-blue eyes glittered with a cold light. “That low-down, miserable excuse for a man!”
Bonnie got shakily to her feet and pulled the twigs from her hair. She was a half-head taller than Lorna and thin to the point
of gauntness, except for her ballooned abdomen. She wasn’t pretty; her mouth was too wide, her nose slightly crooked, and
her cheekbones too prominent. But her brown eyes had a gentle, doelike quality and her dark red hair curled tightly.
“He says I’m a crippled… slut, and this is all I’m good for.” She pulled the sleeve of her dress down over the stub at the
end of her left arm. “He says the sight of it makes him sick.”
“Aah!” Lorna snorted angrily. She had a long mane of blue-black hair, and now she whipped it back over her shoulder with a
quick toss of her head. “
He
makes me sick!” Her expression hardened. “You’re coming home with me,” she said firmly.
“I can’t. He’d come for me.” There was a fearful tremor in her voice.
“Pa won’t let him take you if he knows how he’s using you.”
Bonnie shook her head. “He knows—”
“Godamighty!” The word exploded from Lorna. “You mean—”
“Not your pa,” Bonnie said quickly. “But… he knows Brice told Billy Tyrrell he could have his way with me, if I was willin’.
But I ain’t, Lorna! I ain’t no whore!”
“I know that. When is the baby due?”
“I don’t rightly know, but I think in two or three months.” She looked away from Lorna’s angry stare. “There ain’t nothin’
I can do. Brice wed me. The preacher said the words.”
“That addle-brained fool who spoke words over you was no more a preacher than I am. Brice is a low-down schemer. He knew just
what would make you beholden to him.”
The ring of iron on a stone caused both women to turn toward the man approaching on a big buckskin horse. He was hatless,
and his anger was evident in the redness of his face. Lorna could feel the fear that radiated from the girl beside her.
“I heard shootin’,” he said and pulled his horse to a halt. He laid his angry glance on Bonnie. “What in hell’s goin’ on?”
“
I
was shooting,” Lorna said, her voice icy cold. “I was shooting at that no-good piece of trash you sent down here to pleasure
himself on Bonnie.”
“Is that what
she
said?”
“It’s what
he
said, you cold-blooded… lout!”
The man drew in a deep quivering breath. His nostrils flared angrily. “Have you ever tried mindin’ your own goddamned business?”
he snarled.
Lorna was fully aware that Bonnie would suffer from her interference, but it was too late to do anything except try to get
her away from him.
“Come home with me, Bonnie.” She caught the girl’s arm and tried to turn her to face her.
“I can’t… Lorna—”
“Get on back up to the house,” Brice ordered.
“You don’t have to,” Lorna said urgently.
Bonnie hesitated, then moved away, her shoulders slumped dejectedly. Suddenly she paused and looked over her shoulder at the
man on the horse.
“Mind me, goddammit!” Brice shouted.
Bonnie’s terror burst from her in a choked sob as she ran, stumbling, up the path.
“You’re going to kill her and the babe she’s carrying!” Lorna accused. She stood with her hands on her hips, the whip curled
around her wrist. “Not even an animal treats its mate the way you treat Bonnie.”
“You keep your blasted nose out of my business, hear? And keep away from my wife.”
“She’s no more your
wife
than I am, Brice Fulton. You had some fake preacher say the words so she’d be docile. A man who’d sell a woman out as a whore
is as low as a snake’s belly. What’s Billy paying, Brice? A jug of whiskey? Or are you getting him to steal a few steers for
you?”
Brice Fulton was a large man with a ruddy coloring and pale green eyes that had a way of sliding away from a direct confrontation.
But now he fixed his hard gaze on Lorna, and the anger in him came out and struck at her brutally.
“You little twat. You think you’re so goddamn high, lordin’ it over everybody. You’re nothin’ but a backwoods slut that’s
never been outta these mountains. You don’t know the first thing ’bout actin’ like a lady. Just look at ya—in those britches
and your pa’s old shirt and actin’ so hoity-toity. I’ve been to places that’d make your eyes bug out—”
“Well, la-de-da!” Lorna threw back her head and loosed a shout of laughter that bounced back and forth between the walls of
the narrow canyon. She looked up at the man’s unshaven, unkempt, thoroughly disreputable face and her lips curled in a sneer.
“Are you saying you’re… quality?” Lorna could use her voice unkindly when crossed, and her tone made the word a profound
insult. She laughed again and moved around him to go to her horse.
Brice jumped his mount in front of her and his hand reached for her hair. As swiftly as a deer she sprang out of his reach.
He sidestepped his mount to pin her against a tree.
“What you need is a strap on your butt ’n a week on your back in my bed. That’d take the strut outta ya!”
“You make me want to puke!”
“I’m tellin’ ya to stay away from Bonnie,” he snarled and crowded his horse still closer to her.
“If you hurt her—”
“It ain’t no business a yours what I do with the cripple.”
“You dumb… jackass!” Lorna sneered. “You’re the cripple. You’ve got nothing between your ears but hot air!”
“Someday I’ll wring that blasted neck of yours!” He lifted his hand as if to strike her. At that instant an arrow cut through
the air and passed inches from his head. The tip buried itself in the trunk of the tree so close to him that the flapping
shaft almost touched him. Brice flung himself back and gigged his horse roughly. “What the hell.”
“The next one will land right under your stupid ear and come out the other.” Lorna leaned nonchalantly against the tree, her
small, tight figure wholly relaxed now, amusement in her violet-blue eyes. “C’mon, Brice. Reach for me again,” she taunted.
“I want to see if White Bull can put a hole in your ugly head.”
“You… bitch!” Only his fear of the Indian kept his hands off her. “Someday I’ll get you off by yourself ’n take that smirk
off your face!” He almost strangled on his anger. He jerked his horse roughly and sent it scurrying out of the clearing.
“If you hurt Bonnie I’ll hear about it—then watch your back,” she called after him. She picked up her battered flat-crowned
hat, jammed it down on her head, and mounted her horse. “The varmint,” she muttered. “The weasel, the stinking polecat, slimy
snake, filthy hog—”