Deborah Camp (22 page)

“Turn over.” Catching the spasm of uneasiness on his face, she sighed heavily. “I’ll close my eyes if you want.” She placed a hand over her eyes. “Go on, shy one. You forget I’ve seen what you have and was unaffected by it. Are you finished
covering your precious body parts from these eyes of mine?”

“I’m ready.”

She took her hand away and opened her eyes. The shirt was clutched in his hand and his body—all of it—was exposed for her perusal. Shocked to the core, Copper gasped and her gaze bounced to his face. He grinned, showing even white teeth.

“You rascal!”

His laughter rolled from his chest. “If you don’t have any qualms, neither do I. Why is your face red? Could it be that you’re not completely unaffected by my precious body parts? I got to admit, Copper, that my body parts aren’t completely unaffected by you.” He glanced down at himself. “As you can clearly see for yourself.”

Despite her resolve not to, she looked. Indeed, he’d grown thick and was lifting, searching. Copper grasped the shirt, and after a minor tussle, was able to wrench it from Tucker’s hand and spread it over his privates.

“You!” She spluttered for a few seconds, then laughed with him. “Ornery, that’s what you are.”

“I wonder why you’re suddenly so timid about looking at me? When I first arrived here you were as bold as a bantam. Now you want me to cover up because it embarrasses you to look at me. Can you venture a guess as to why?”

Copper rubbed oil into his leg and refused to answer.

He folded his hands under his head and stared at the beamed and sodded ceiling. “Maybe it’s because you don’t want to ruminate about how I get stiff for you at the drop of a hat.”

Copper bit down on her lips.

“It was all well and good for you to see me in the altogether when I was weak as a kitten and you could treat me like that baby of yours. But now that I’m on the mend and feeling my oats, you can’t even look me in the eye.”

She was staring at the scar on his chest where the arrow had plugged him clear through and memories of those early days swam in her mind. She recalled thinking how hairy he was, how unlike the Indian men she’d seen. She’d also thought him handsome, and she still did. Even more handsome now that she knew him better and found him to be gentle and teasing, kind and rowdy. These combinations pleased her and created conflicting emotions within her. While she quivered with awareness, she also quaked with trepidation. She knew firsthand that a man could become a beast when sexually aroused.

He huffed a sigh. “Quit your shaking. I’m not going to jump on you and have my way, for Christ’s sake. I was only funning you, Copper.” He turned onto his side and propped his head in one hand. The shirt slipped to reveal his tight buttocks. Twin dimples poked at the skin at the base of his spine.

Releasing a shaky breath, she corked the liniment bottle and sat away from him, cross-legged. Sensing his disappointment in her, she yearned to find favor with him again. She had to make him understand her reluctance … her dread of man-woman rituals.

“My husband was not a good man,” she blurted out, and Tucker’s gaze sharpened as he riveted his attention on her. “Not like you at all.”

“Tell me. What did he do? Beat you?”

“He hit me, but not often. He feared me at first and was jealous of my medicine. He never treated me with respect. It was never good with him.”

“It?”

She nodded and her eyes spoke to him. Tucker gathered in a quick breath and let it out.

“Oh. Sex, you mean.”

“Yes. It always hurt. It was brutal.”

“But you know that it doesn’t have to be.”

“What I know is that it was for me. Men enjoy and women endure because we need the man to provide for our children.”

“Oh, Copper.” He shook his head sadly. “There’s more to it than a blunt trade off. When two people love each other—”

“There was none of that, but I don’t want to talk about this.”

“Naturally.” He fell back, his mood suddenly black, his frown fierce. “You never want to talk about important things.”

“I was going to tell you about my first child, but if you’re going to pout and—”

“No.” He turned onto his side again and arranged the shirt to cover himself better. “Tell me. Talk to me, Copper. I want to understand what has made you this way.”

She didn’t like the implication that she was somehow abnormal, but she let it go. For her own part, she had a need to explain to him why Valor was the most important thing in the world to her—why Valor would always be more important than him or any other man.

Clasping her hands in her lap, she rubbed one over the other and a corresponding twisting erupted in her stomach as those dark days swept back to her on wide, light-blocking wings.

“Being with child was the most wonderful thing that had happened to me since I’d come to live in Stands Tall’s lodge,” she began, her voice revealing the strain she was under. “The child moving inside of me brightened the otherwise bleak days of waiting on Stands Tall and being tortured by his staff night after night.” She twisted her hands faster and faster in her lap before she realized what she was doing and forced herself to stop.

“The baby was born. A boy,” she continued, a glimmer of a smile working itself up from her heart to her lips. “A beautiful, dusky-skinned boy.
He was big like his father and I was small and young. I labored long before I was finally able to push him free. I was in great pain, but my joy was greater because he was so beautiful and his cries were lusty and healthy. Stands Tall named him Two Suns because his birth journey took two days.”

Tucker maintained his silence, letting her tell her story in her own time. He noted that she’d lapsed into her more stilted Indian pattern of speech and he guessed that her memories had taken her back to those days when she’d lost touch with her white ancestry.

“Stands Tall was proud of his son for the first few weeks, but then he started noticing that something wasn’t right. By the time the boy was six months old, it was obvious that he couldn’t hear.”

“He was deaf?”

She nodded. “Stands Tall rejected our son. He couldn’t accept that he, a great medicine man, had spawned an imperfect child. He was ashamed and he said that I’d shamed him. I tried to tell him that our son would learn to hear with his eyes and his other senses, but Stands Tall hated Two Suns and he hated me. One day he made me look into a mirror and he told me that I was looking at a monster’s whore … that some monster had worked its way into my womb and passed itself off as Stands Tall’s child. Then he …” She had to swallow hard before her voice returned. “He slammed my f–face into the mirror. The glass broke and a piece of it buried into my skin. While I cleansed my wounds, he took Two Suns. I wanted to track him, but he’d placed guards outside our lodge and they wouldn’t let me leave.”

Tucker stared at her hands, which were twining like two snakes in her lap. He could only guess at her agony.

“Stands Tall returned by evening—without Two
Suns.” Her voice was lifeless, her skin as pale as moonlight. “He wouldn’t tell me where he’d left the baby and he tied me up so that I couldn’t search for him. I swore in front of the others and my Crow family that Stands Tall wouldn’t live to see another full moon.” Her flat voice sent a chill through him. “I meant to kill my husband to avenge my son’s death. Stands Tall laughed at me.”

“But he died in a flood.”

She shrugged. “My hatred for him was so powerful that I called upon the elements to help me send him to hell. The Crow held council and rejected me because I had turned my medicine against my own.”

“But your husband had killed his own son! Did they think that was justified?”

“Yes.” She watched the shock register on his lean face. “The baby was malformed and a burden on the tribe. Not a burden to me.” She pressed a fist between her heaving breasts. “Two Suns was my heart. But they didn’t consult me. They let Stands Tall rip my heart from me and leave it for the animals to devour.” A sob robbed her of her voice and she bent her head until she had control again. “I never found any trace of my son. When I realized I was pregnant again, I swore that my next child, no matter how imperfect, would not be thrown away like human waste! And I swore that I’d never allow another man to use me, to force a way of life on me or to take what is mine.” She trembled and her breath came in ragged gasps. “Do you understand now, Tucker? Can you see why I don’t want another husband … another man to claim me and my child?”

He nodded, although he wanted to argue with her that it was unfair to label all men bastards and baby-killers. The hollowness in her eyes told him that his arguments couldn’t penetrate her pain.

“I’m honored that you allow me to hold your baby now and again, Copper. I hope that means you believe that I won’t hurt her.”

She gave him a measured stare. “It’s hard for me to believe, but I do. I hope you don’t disappoint me.”

“I won’t.” He drew an “X” on his chest with a forefinger. “Cross my heart.”

One corner of her mouth inched up. “I remember that. I think my mother might have taught that to me.” She repeated the gesture. “Cross your heart and hope to die.”

“What was your family doing all alone out there? Why weren’t they traveling with others?”

“I don’t know …” Her mind plucked at a thread of memory. “Something about my father drinking and fighting, I think. We were with others. I remember a line of wagons, and then we were alone and my mother and father spoke in loud voices. She cursed whiskey and his temper.”

“Irish temper,” Tucker commented. “I think you might have inherited a smidgen of it.”

A tense quietude fell over them, broken only by Valor’s soft cooing and gurgling. Copper stood and went to change the baby’s napkin. While she was occupied, Tucker slipped into his clothes again. He took up the rifle and unbolted the door.

“Where are you going?”

“To check on the horses. Brave should be on his feet by now. I want to make sure his wounds aren’t infected.” He started to pull open the door, but her hand on his froze him. Her tenderness toward him made his heart swell painfully in his chest. His gaze slid to hers. His heart flew up into his throat.

Without a word, she rose on tiptoe and pressed her cool, lush lips against his bruised eye socket. A sigh wafted past his lips. No kiss had ever felt so good, so right, so healing. She moved back
from him and her face had heaven in it. He offered a smile of thanksgiving and let himself outside. Looking up at the starry sky, he felt truly blessed.

N
o new powder fell for two whole weeks. The break in the winter weather was a welcome respite. Even the horses kicked up their heels in the corral. Brave’s wounds were healing and Courage’s belly swelled as her gestation period entered its last third. The creeks and streams moved more rapidly, gurgling over rocks and boulders. Overhead, birds swept from wet branch to wet branch. Rabbit and squirrel tracks dotted the countryside as animals ventured out of their burrows and lodges. One morning Copper spotted deer tracks near the cabin. After examining them, she determined there had been three—one stag and two doe.

On the sixteenth morning without new snow, Copper awakened Tucker before dawn had splashed color on the sky.

“Waaa?” He rolled onto his back and glared at her with the eye Micah had socked. The skin around it was pale blue.

“Get up.”

“What time is it?” His voice was full of gravel.

“Still night, but by the time we get ready it’ll be light enough to travel.”

“To where?”

Copper took a minute to admire his sleepy visage. His sandy hair was tousled and his eyes were puffy and slitted against the light. He looked adorable.
She yearned to comb the hair back from his forehead and place kisses in the creases in his cheeks where his dimples were buried. His morning beard darkened the lower half of his face. She couldn’t recall Stands Tall ever having stubble. The differences between Stands Tall and Tucker Jones were so plentiful that it would be foolish to even begin listing them.

More and more, she longed to touch Tucker in the most seductive ways. She wanted to trace his curvy upper lip with her fingertip, to run the pad of her thumb across his white, slick teeth, to know the texture of his sable eyebrows, to explore the intricacies of his perfectly shaped ears with the tip of her tongue. But she knew he’d never hold still for such an exploration. He was a man, and that meant he’d take control once she gave him the slightest advantage. Then all would be lost. Even their friendship would suffer.

She noted his look of consternation. “We’re going to geyser country,” she told him. “To a hot springs basin I know of there. It’ll be good for both of us, but especially you. It’ll strengthen that bum leg of yours. So haul your dimpled backside out of that bed, Tucker Jones. You saddle Ranger and Hauler, and I’ll stir up some breakfast.”

Moving sluggishly, he obeyed. They ate a breakfast of potato cakes and molasses. Copper packed a cold supper and slung Valor and the cradleboard over the saddle horn, instead of riding with the baby strapped to her back. Valor had put on weight and it was no longer comfortable for Copper to carry her papoose-style for long periods of time. They left Patrol and Sentry to guard Brave and Courage. Since Brave hadn’t fully healed, Tucker rode Hauler. The mule stepped daintily but with sure feet across the snow-packed ground. Ranger and Copper blazed the trail, but the path broadened enough for Tucker to ride beside Copper.

Copper had insisted that he wrap a length of wool over the lower half of his face and pull the hood up over his head, not just to ward off the nip in the air but to hide from prying eyes. The tactics brought to bear the danger he represented for her.

“I feel that I’m more trouble to you than I’m worth,” he had said as he had adjusted the muffler over his chin and mouth.

She’d shrugged nonchalantly. “That can be said of most men.”

Now she turned slightly on her thin, pad saddle with its nubby pommel and surveyed him with glittering eyes.

“How’s the leg feeling?”