Winter's Touch (20 page)

Too cold to argue with her, and considering that she had the warmer wrap, he climbed awkwardly into the saddle. The instant he was seated, she pressed herself to his back and reached around his shoulders with the buffalo robe to envelope him in the meager warmth with her.

They rode into the teeth of the blizzard. The world was reduced to stinging white, not even swirling, but driving directly into their faces.

They kept their faces down.

Carson wasn’t sure how he found the cabin in all that white nothingness. He wasn’t above believing in miracles just then. But suddenly there it was, gray and squat and abandoned, and as welcome to him in that moment as would have been the mansion at Greenbrier had his former home popped up in front of him.

He dismounted before the cabin and shoved open the door. It was dark and dirty and smelled like the south end of a north-bound skunk, and was just about the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

He turned back toward the horse and caught Winter Fawn and the robe up in his arms as she was climbing down from the saddle. He thought for a minute that he was weaker than he’d realized. She seemed so much heavier than she should. Then he remembered that the thick hair on the buffalo robe wrapped around her had gotten soaked. It was covered in ice and snow, adding nearly as much weight again as Winter Fawn herself.

He carried her into the gloomy cabin and set her on her feet. He wanted nothing more than to fall with her to the floor and just lay there for a year or two, but he didn’t fancy freezing to death, nor letting the horse and mule freeze either.

There was kindling and a few logs beside the rock fireplace. “See if you can get a fire started,” he told Winter Fawn.

He went back outside and started unloading the packs from the mule, carrying them in and stacking them along the front wall. Outside there was a wood pile, thank God, at the corner of the cabin.

When the packs, pack saddle, and saddle were indoors, Carson led the animals to the lean-to around the corner. It wasn’t much, just three flimsy walls and a roof, but it would help keep the wind off the poor beasts. Their saddle blankets were drier on the top side, having been protected from the rain and snow by the saddles. Underneath, they were damp with sweat. He turned each blanket over and put them back on the animals to help keep them warm.

They needed grain. On his way back into the cabin to get the grain sack from among the packs, he knocked the snow off the top of the wood pile and took an armload of firewood with him.

Winter Fawn had a small fire going. With her teeth chattering as hard as his, she rushed to help him stack the wood beside the fireplace. While he dragged out the bag of grain, she added more logs to the fire.

Carson’s hands were so numb, his fingers so unresponsive, that he dropped the bag three times before he finally succeeded in getting it into his arms and out the door. There was a wooden crib nailed crudely to one wall in the lean-to. When Carson opened the bag to pour the grain, his fingers slipped and half the contents of the bag spilled into the bin.

He was tempted to just leave it. God knew the animals deserved it after this day. But he didn’t know how many more days the grain would have to last. He couldn’t take the chance of running out completely only two days into their trek. With hands that shook so hard they were nearly useless, he managed, after several minutes, to scoop a good portion of the grain back into the bag, leaving enough so each would have enough to last into tomorrow.

When he stepped back out of the lean-to the wind, if possible, felt stronger, sliced deeper. He lowered his head and staggered into it, the bag of grain held tight against his chest. For safety, so he wouldn’t spill the rest. For warmth—it kept the wind off at least a small part of him.

He made it back into the cabin and shut the door. No longer needing to lean forward to walk, he nearly fell on his face without the wind to hold him up.

Winter Fawn noted the grayness beneath his tanned skin and worried. He wasn’t moving, except to sway where he stood just inside the door with the bag of grain clutched in his arms and a glazed look in his eyes. Still shivering herself, but not as badly since she’d started the fire, she took the bag from him and set it on the floor.

Then she touched his arm. “Come. The fire is warm.”

Slowly he turned his face and stared at her, but didn’t otherwise move.

“The fire, Carson,” she urged. “It will warm you.”

Finally he blinked, and awareness crept back into his eyes. He looked at the fire with the longing of a man seeing a glimpse of heaven. Then he shook his head. “Not yet. We’ll need water. We need more wood to last the night.”

When he turned back toward the door, Winter Fawn steeled herself for the bitter cold to come and started to follow him. She wanted to stay in the cabin. Desperately wanted to. She was so, so cold. She felt as if she’d been cold her entire life and would never be warm again. But if he was going back out there, she should too.

“No,” he said. “Stay here.”

“I can help,” she managed through her chattering teeth.

“Your feet will freeze in those moccasins. I’m wearing boots. You stay here. See if there are any dry clothes in the packs.”

He was right about her feet. They were already numb and she hadn’t been walking in snow. Outside the door it was piled almost knee-keep.

If she could find dry clothes, she could help him that way. But it hurt to watch him go back out into the blizzard. Not as much as it would hurt to go with him, but it hurt.

“Wait,” she told him. “You’ll need something to pack snow in for melting.” She knew her father always carried bladder pouches for heating water. Quickly she located two.

Carson took them from her and left. As soon as he shut the door behind himself, she knelt before her father’s packs and started digging through them again. He always carried a change of clothes. She tried to hurry, but her hands were clumsy, her arms heavy.

Among her father’s belongings she found ammunition for his rifle—the rifle he had with him. Her fingers brushed a hard object, and before she even saw it she recognized by touch the book of poems by the man named Robert Burns. Her father never went anywhere without that book. He used to read aloud from it to her and Hunter. He said he would rather be without his rifle than to lose “Robby’s poems.”

She found the food supplies, the coffee pot, the skillet, all of which she set next to her on the floor.

There, finally, a green wool shirt, and pair of denim pants she had never seen him wear, and three pairs of heavy wool socks.

Beside her the door burst open. Carson, along with a whirl of snow, blew in on the icy wind. Before she could rise, he had dumped the wood, handed her the two pouches filled with snow, and left again.

Holding the pouches by their leather straps, she hugged her father’s clothes to her chest and pushed herself to her feet. She would hang the pouches on the wall for now and warm the clothes at the fire, so that when Carson put them on they would warm him.

Looking down at her wet doeskin tunic and skirt, she realized that she, too, needed dry clothing. Carson did not need a sick woman to care for.

But there were no more clothes. A shirt, a pair of pants, and three pairs of socks. To clothe two people.

It could not be helped. Her mother had taught her that it was all right to wish for more, even, at times, to seek more. But one must first be grateful for that which was at hand. She would take the shirt and Carson would have the pants. They would each have a pair of socks to warm their feet.

She should have removed her sodden garments and put on the dry shirt while Carson was out getting more wood. She could not conceive of undressing in front of him. But the thought of having nothing to cover her legs when the next blast of freezing air swept the room with his next entrance was more than she could bear. She would wait until he was finished coming and going.

She found a nail on the wall beside the door and hung the pouches of snow there, then laid the clothes out before the hearth and started stacking the firewood Carson had dropped to the floor.

Twice more he came and went, looking more gray and haggard each time.

“This is enough, is it not?” she asked, stooping to stack the latest load.

“Yeah.” He leaned back against the door and closed his eyes for a moment. “This will hold us into tomorrow.”

“I found clothes.” She motioned toward the items before the fire. “Not many. We will have to share.”

Carson stared down at the pants, shirt, and socks. He was so cold that his mind was slow to realize the ramifications of so few clothes. At first all he could do was dread the effort it would take to remove the wet and half-frozen things he was wearing, and dread equally the moments his bare skin would be exposed to the air in the cabin that had yet to warm much.

When he finally realized that he would be without a shirt and Winter Fawn would be wearing nothing
but
a shirt, he shook his head. Why the hell didn’t things like this happen to him when he was in good enough shape to take advantage of them? When he was with a woman he wouldn’t feel guilty taking advantage of?

To take his mind off the inevitability of Winter Fawn’s bare legs he was certain to get an eyeful of, he gazed blankly around the room. It was tiny, barely eight by eight, with one shuttered window and one door. Along the wall beside the door, the black soot in the rock fireplace spoke of much use in the past. There were three shelves mounted to the wall opposite the fireplace, and in the corner opposite the door, the frame of a bunk was nailed to the wall. There was no mattress, and what was left of the ropes to hold a mattress lay in tatters on the dirt floor.

Crossing the room, Carson peeled the frozen blankets from his shoulders. The ice that been holding them in the shape of his shoulders crackled and fell away as he draped them over one side of the bed frame. He then turned and looked at Winter Fawn, at the snow-covered buffalo robe draping her. The room was warming; snow was melting off the robe and dripping onto the hard-packed dirt floor.

Winter Fawn met his gaze for a long moment, reluctant to part with the robe, fearing the loss of its protection from the cold.

But then, she was so cold already that she doubted taking it off would make much difference. The room
was
warming, after all. Finally she nodded to the question in Carson’s eyes. Yes. She would take off the robe. Taking a deep breath, she let it slide from her shoulders. Its weight, her numb hands, and a frustrating weakness due to her wound and the cold nearly caused her to drop it. Carson helped her carry it to the other bed frame board.

She wondered if she was going to be able to lift the tunic off over her head.

Carson moved to one side of the fireplace and turned his back to her. He pulled the tail of his undershirt from his pants and peeled the shirt off over his head.

Winter Fawn turned abruptly away. She knew he was right. The sooner she got out of her wet clothes, the sooner she would get warm. The tunic was heavy with dampness, but she managed to slip her arms free and lift the doeskin over her head. Before dropping it on the rock hearth, she gave a brief glance over her shoulder to make certain Carson was not looking.

The bandage around his waste made her smile. Not because he’d been wounded, but because it was so similar to hers.

Then her gaze lowered.

Oh, my.
With a sharp intake of breath, she quickly turned away, the sight of his trim, muscular,
naked
backside forever carved into her mind. With hands that shook from something more than cold, she pulled on her father’s shirt.

Foolishness, she told herself. Pure foolishness to react in such a manner. A breechcloth on a windy day revealed nearly as much as what she had just seen. And she had certainly seen that and more when she and a group of girls had spied on the boys at the swimming hole.

But their skin had been dark and familiar. Carson’s was white, his legs covered in dark hair.

The boys at the swimming hole had been that—boys. Carson was a man. A virtual stranger. And they were alone together in this dim shelter with the wind howling like a tortured wolf outside the door. And she herself was about to become half naked. Maybe those things together caused her heart to race.

She ran a trembling hand down the front of the shirt. The wool was scratchy against her skin, but it was dry, and much warmer than her wet clothes.

The sleeves hung way past her fingers. She had to fold them three times to get them above her hands. The tail hung down to just above her knees. She thought to leave her skirt on, but it was so wet that already its dampness was soaking into the hem of the shirt. Soon the shirt would be as wet as everything else. Beneath its length she loosened her skirt and let it fall to the floor. Behind her she heard the rustling of heavy fabric as Carson stepped into her father’s pants. She heard his harsh breathing. She heard her heart pound in her ears.

“Are you decent?” came his voice.

She looked down at her bare legs. “Nae, but I fear it canna be helped.”

Frowning, with one hand holding Innes’s too-large pants up to keep from shocking Winter Fawn—not to mention freezing a rather important part of his anatomy—Carson turned. Her legs were long and shapely. He wished fleetingly that he was in good enough shape to appreciate them more fully. But he wasn’t, and neither was she. Beneath her bronze skin was a paleness from the fierce cold. She needed to get warm. They both did.

They had the fire, the ground sheet, and the canvass tarp. Those things were not going to be enough. The buffalo robe was too wet to use, and the blankets were stiff with cold. But he hadn’t pulled the blankets from the bedroll until after the rain had turned to snow. They were cold, but relatively dry. After finding a length of rope in the pack and tying it around his waist to keep from losing his pants, he grabbed the blankets from the bed frame, shook them out, and held them up before the fire. He was still shaking; the blankets fluttered.

Winter Fawn took the clothes they had both been wearing and draped them where the blankets had been, then she located the bedroll and spread out the groundsheet before the fire. She was shaking less than before, Carson noticed. He, too, was starting to thaw somewhat. But he was still miserably cold, and she had to be, too.