Deborah Camp (11 page)

“I might just do that,” Tucker said, grinning as he pushed the firecrackers into his pocket. “Nice of you, Gus. Thanks.”

“I got no use for them.” Gus shrugged off the gratitude and heaved himself from the chair. He ambled over to the stew pot. “Stand aside, Tucker Jones. I’m about to make a stew your tongue won’t soon forget. Copper, you whup up some of your batter biscuits.”

“They’ll hit the spot,” Tucker said, giving Copper a special smile. “Copper’s about the best cook I’ve come across since I left my mother’s table.”

Copper ducked her head, trying to hide her blush. Tucker found encouragement in his ability to fluster her. He ran the tip of his tongue over his dry lips and suffered a keen wanting for her taste.

“Yank, fetch us some fresh water. Figure we’ll need a whole bucketful to cool you off.” Gus narrowed one blue eye at Tucker. “Looks like you’ve got yourself one powerful thirst.”

G
us decided to spend the night. When Tucker went outside to check on the horses and mules, Gus fell into step beside him.

“Thought I’d come along and give Copper a chance to get herself and the baby ready for bed without two hairy men ogling her,” Gus said, stumping along beside Tucker through the snowdrifts.

Tucker glanced over his shoulder at the collection of logs, rock, and mortar. Golden light shone through the window. Behind the cabin a sheer rock face of gray and blue thrust skyward. The cabin had become his haven. Looking upon it, he felt the same comfort he’d known the last time he’d seen his family home in Illinois. That home, he knew, was no more. Home had become this ragtag collection of hewn logs and jutting rocks.

“Sometimes that cabin is as tiny as a hat box.” Tucker pushed open the corral fence. Gus’ line-backed mule bawled and shook snow from its short mane. “Your visit has put Copper into a good mood. She’s been short-tempered lately. Having you around acts like a tonic on her.”

“After all the woes that gal’s endured, it’s a wonder she isn’t a jibbering idiot.” Gus grabbed the mule’s halter and led him toward the stables.

“She’s had a tough time of it,” Tucker agreed.
“What with being abandoned by the Crow and all. Why’d they do that to her?”

“They think she killed her husband.”

“But she didn’t.”

Gus grinned. “You don’t sound too sure of that, Yankee blue.”

Tucker stabled Gus’ mule beside Hauler. “She hasn’t exactly denied it.”

Gus gave a snort. “She strike you as a woman who could slay her own husband?” He scratched at his flowing beard. “’Course you did say she might take a tomahawk to you, didn’t you now?”

“You know I didn’t mean that.” Tucker kicked at the packed dirt beneath his moccasins. He hadn’t gotten used to the soft soles and wished for a proper pair of Union boots. “I was blowing steam. I’ve been out of sorts.”

“Been awhile, has it?” Gus’ randy grin said the rest.

Tucker grimaced, enduring the twinge of self-pity. “You betcha, old-timer. Lately, I’ve been in a world of hurt.”

Gus laughed with devilish delight. “Hiyup, that’s something I know about, pilgrim. In these high mountains the women are not so refined, but they sure are warm and cuddly.” He put a finger to his cracked lips. “Got something tucked in my saddle bags for such an occasion.” He rummaged through the packed panniers and pulled out a brown bottle encased in straw.

“These spirits were made by an old prospector friend of mine. Had to trade him a blanket, eight cartridges, and two ’baccer twists for just one bottle, but it’s worth it.” He uncorked the bottle and tipped it to his mouth. His throat worked. When he handed it to Tucker, Tucker saw that the kick of the liquor had brought tears to the old man’s eyes.

“Much obliged.” Tucker sniffed at the stuff and his stomach shriveled in response. Undaunted, he upended the bottle and filled his mouth with the
liquid fire. He coughed around a second sip and blindly held out the bottle to Gus. For a moment all he could see was black smoke. Flames shot through his stomach, followed by a delicious shiver that began in his gut and spread out to his fingertips and toes.

“Oooooweeee!” Tucker winked and sucked in the breath of life. “That’s got a powerful punch,” he rasped, barely able to speak.

Gus cackled and took another swig. “Don’t it though? If it don’t cure what ails you, it’ll at least kill you and put you out of your misery.”

Tucker bent over and laughed. The joke wasn’t all that funny but—
damn!
—it felt good to let go a laugh.

“Feeling better, soldier?”

“That liquor can’t take the place of a woman,” Tucker allowed, “but it sure as shootin’ beats playing five finger stud in the middle of the night. Maybe it’ll keep me from doing something foolish like grabbing for Copper and drawing back a bloody stump.”

Gus raised one leg and whacked his thigh with the flat of his hand. He released a cheery whoop of laughter. “Tis true, soldier blue. Tis true!” He ran his forefinger over his extravagant mustache and reined in his juicy chuckles. “You don’t have to worry about Copper doing you harm. Not unless you do unto her first. Wouldn’t want to make an enemy of her. After all, she possesses powerful medicine.”

Tucker hooked his fingers in his belt and felt Copper’s teeth marks in the tough rawhide. “You don’t believe that, do you?”

“That she has medicine? Sure do.” Gus gave a curt nod. “If anybody should believe it, you should. She pulled you out of death’s jaws. You was more dead than alive when she found you. That girl’s got one tall spirit.”

“She’s smart, that’s true.” Tucker looked
askance at him. “But magic? You think she has magic? That’s what medicine is to Indians, isn’t it?”

“Oh, it’s more than that, pilgrim.” Gus offered Tucker another taste of the evil spirits, but Tucker declined. “It’s grit and know-how and having the luck in the palm of your hand when you need it. It’s what separates the braves from the scouts. The Crow think Copper’s a witch.”

“Because her husband died and they think she had something to do with it?”

“Oh, it goes further back than that. Goes back to the first time they laid eyes on her—when she was knee-high.”

Gus stowed the bottle in the pannier again, then sat cross-legged on the dirt floor and motioned Tucker to sit in front of him. Tucker eased himself down, careful of his splinted leg.

Gus pulled his bone pipe from his possibles bag and filled it from his doeskin tobacco pouch. “You smoke?”

“No.”

“Chew?”

“Never acquired a taste for tobacco.”

“If an Injun ever asks you to smoke or chew, you best do it and act like you like it. It’s an insult to refuse a pipe or twist.” He squinted through blue smoke at Tucker. “You better learn about the red men if you plan on staying in these mountains.” He got the pipe going, then squinted his expressive blue eyes at Tucker. “Is that your plan or do you think you’ll journey to the fort after the snow melts?”

“I haven’t decided.” Tucker drew a compass in the dirt with his finger and wondered if any such instrument could show him the way to happiness. “I should join up with my regiment when I’m able.”

“The army’s been looking for you.”

A stone-cold chill passed through him. “They have?”

Gus nodded. “They’ve sent out a few searchers, who’ve been told you and the others were all killed by the Gros Ventre.”

“So I’m a dead man to the army.”

“Well, that’s what they probably figure. Of course, they never saw a body. Out here that’s not so unusual. Christian burials are a luxury few know in this wilderness.” Gus puffed on the pipe for a minute, and Tucker had no desire to disturb the silence. “You want them to think you’re dead?”

Tucker wiped through the dirt picture. “It might be best. I’m not sure I’d be worth much to them anymore. I’ve given the Union everything but my life.”

“Reckon they should discharge you with something left over for yourself.” Gus coughed and wheezed. “Blasted ’baccer has too much loco weed in it.”

Tucker massaged the muscles in his splinted leg. They felt stringy in comparison to his other leg. Suddenly, Ranger let out a high whinney.

“Smells a wild mare,” Gus said, smiling at Tucker’s jolt of surprise. “It’s the call of the wild. I know something about that myself. You, too, probably.”

Tucker nodded and stretched onto his side. He cradled his head in one hand and faced Gus. “Tell me more about Copper. How did her husband die?”

“Got killed in a flash flood. It was all right queer.” Gus shrugged deeper into his grizzly bear coat. “The Crow had been looking for bufflers for nigh on a month. None of them critters to be found. Seemed like the Crow was just missing them. They went on the scout again. Copper was powerful mad at her man and she told him and her family that he wouldn’t live to see another full
moon. He laughed at her and said she was a toothless mountain cat.” Gus paused to draw smoke into his lungs, and Tucker waited impatiently for him to continue his story.

“The men mounted their ponies and off they went to bring meat back to the village,” Gus said, blowing blue smoke into the crisp air. “That first night they camped near the Yellowstone—Indians call it Elk River—and it come up a rain like they’d never seen before. The sky opened up and they had no time to strike the camp. Everyone scrambled for their lives. Stands Tall, a good swimmer and a big, muscled man, was the only one claimed by the flooding river.” He punctuated his story with jabs of the pipe stem. “I didn’t witness this, mind you, but I’ve heard the story often enough. The others with him said the river came up for him, grabbed him, and sucked him under. He never surfaced. Fact is, nobody ever found his body.” Gus snapped his fingers. “Gone. Just like that.”

Tucker scratched his stubbled chin. “I’m confused. How could they blame that on Copper?”

“She’d proclaimed it, and it came to pass,” Gus said, his tone calling Tucker a numbskull.

“That’s it? She threatened her husband and the Indians thought she’d worked magic?” He threw back his head and laughed. “What superstitious nonsense!”

“That’s your name for it, greenhorn. The Crows had learned to take what Copper said to heart. When her family was massacred, she came walking out of the burning rubble of wagons and bodies, wearing nothing but her father’s shirt. Arrows were stuck clean through that shirt, but none of them—nary a one!—so much as grazed her ivory skin. Not a drop of blood on her. Not a scratch. She walked to the raiding chief and stared up at him with those dark, damning eyes of hers, and the chief said he felt a great power in her. He
knew a little witch when he saw one. From then on, the Crow gave her a wide path.”

“If they were afraid of her, why did they take her in?”

“Better to have her on their side than against them,” Gus explained. “They’d slaughtered her family and had to make amends or she’d surely bring bad medicine on their village.”

Tucker imagined a young girl in her father’s over-sized shirt toddling toward a fearsome Indian chief. She must have been in shock and unaware of what she was doing, he thought. Having been a victim of an Indian ambush himself, he knew the feeling.

“None of the arrows hit her,” he murmured to himself.

“Not one,” Gus said, little puffs of smoke escaping with each word. “Miraculous.”

“She has the luck of the Irish.” Tucker furrowed his brow. “Why’d she want her husband to die?”

“That’s for her to tell you. Not me.” Gus held out the pipe for Tucker’s inspection. “Got that in my latest trade.”

“Who had all this stuff to trade?”

“A Reb deserter. They’re coming through these mountain passes more and more—both the Blue and the Gray. Like you, he was young and inexperienced. He was in the trading mood for food and clothing, and I liked this pipe and a few other things he had in his possession. Can you figure out why a man would bring this pipe and a hand mirror to these mountains and not bring along enough food and clothing?” Gus shook his head and grinned. “Some men have not one lick of common sense.”

“Probably didn’t give much thought to provisions. Tucking tail and running doesn’t afford a man time to plan.” Tucker held the older man’s stare. “I didn’t desert. We were ambushed and the deserters I was bringing to the fort took me as
their hostage. Then the Indians attacked us. If I don’t report to my regiment when I’m able,
then
you can call me a deserter.”

Gus shrugged. “You’re only running away if you’ve got nowhere to run to. If you’ve got yourself a destination, then you’re on a pilgrimage to my mind.” He eyed him curiously. “What was your rank?”

“I’m a Union captain,” Tucker answered, purposefully using the present tense.

“Captain, eh?” Gus pulled his coat closer around his wide shoulders as the wind came whistling into the stables. “Did you climb up in the ranks or did your family name give you a boost?”

“I lived through enough blood and battles to earn my bars.”

Gus tapped the rest of the burning tobacco from his pipe and scattered it. “By spring it might all be over.”

“I hope to God it is.” He had never meant anything more in his life.

They lapsed into a thoughtful silence. Tucker watched the dozing horses and docile-eyed mules. Only Ranger stood alert, his nostrils flared, his ears pricked forward. He skinned back his lips to expose his teeth and issued a low, blustery sound.

Gus chuckled. “Call of the wild, eh, boy? Call of the wild.”

Tucker answered with a smile. Could the wild mare smell Ranger, too? Was she sending out signals missed by humans but picked up by willing males? Tucker’s thoughts circled to his own kind. Could Copper be just a little bit interested in him? If he did touch her soft, freckled skin, would she strike him or allow him the meager luxury?

The wind crooned through the stables, bringing with it the scent of pine. Ranger tossed his head and pawed the dirt.

“I’d like to learn enough to live out here,”
Tucker said. “But I’m not sure I’m able. I suspect it takes a special kind of adventurer to carve a niche in these mountains.”

“Not so special. Tough. Tough and ornery and open to new ways. I survived the first few years by throwing myself on the mercy of those who’d weathered the winters and rolled in the spring clover. You can’t live out here like a gentleman or a Union captain. You can only live out here like a trapper, a mountain man, a white Injun. You can’t just
admire
nature, you’ve got to
understand
it.” His blue eyes measured Tucker. “Instead of thinking Copper’s got nothing but luck, you might ought to open your mind to the possibility of powerful medicine at work in her.”