Holt's Gamble (30 page)

Clay closed his eyes. He'd believed that about himself once, too. Now, thinking of the woman who'd turned him away, he didn't know.
Time has a way of changing things.
Ben coughed again, and Clay tightened his arms around him.

"Bendin' never come easy to me..." Ben said, gripping Clay's arm. "An' I lost her... was too stubborn..."

"Lost—? You mean Joey?" Years ago, Ben had mentioned a woman. Said he'd lost her to another man. A steadier man. He'd never told him the woman's name. All the times he'd met Joey over the years he and Ben had been trapping together, he'd been too young or stupid to notice. But back at the fort, only a blind man could have missed how much they still cared for each other.

Ben smiled and his eyes slid shut. "My only regret. But you... you ain't made of hickory, like me. Take yer chance. Bend a little. She'll come to ya."

Clay's brows drew together in a frown. Ben was talking about Kierin. He sighed, knowing Ben was wrong about her. But this was no time to argue. "All right, Ben. Don't worry."

Ben's breath rattled in his chest like seeds in a dried locust pod. The sound of pounding hoof beats sliding to a stop made Clay look up. Jacob, Jim, and Daniel were already off their mounts and hurrying toward the fallen main. Clay and Jacob exchanged bleak looks.

Ben blinked slowly, trying to focus on Clay. His voice was a whisper. "Dove..."

Clay ran his hand across Ben's damp brow. "She can stay with us for as long as she wants. We'll all watch out for her."

Too weak to respond, he managed a smile that tipped the corner of his mouth. Ben took one last shuddering breath, then was gone.

* * *

With a heavy heart, Clay pounded the marker into the ground at the head of Ben's freshly covered grave. They'd buried him at the foot of the bluffs where the soil was still soft enough to take the blade of a shovel. The fine, reddish dirt accepted the wooden stake as generously as it had the body of his old friend. The others had gone, leaving him alone with the grave. Clay sat back on his heels and stared vacantly at the rough placard he'd carved.

Ben Crowley

Voyager & Friend

Died: June 16, 1854

By the horn of a buffalo

Rest in peace

Damn few words to sum up a man's life, Clay mused bitterly, tossing the fist-sized rock aside. Above him, a red-tailed hawk circled in the mauve-tinged evening sky, sailing on the fickle currents of air below the bluff. Clay tipped his head back to watch it dip and soar. If his friend, Many Horses, were here, he would call the hawk a sign from the All Father that Ben's spirit had begun its journey heavenward. Clay wasn't sure he believed in any god that could have stripped him of so many of the people he loved. So many.

He knew, however, that Ben believed in the great circle of life as the Cheyenne did. His gaze followed the ascending hawk.
"Wakantanka opa, tsehe-heto,"
Clay whispered in Cheyenne. Go with the Great Spirit, my father.

He stood and slapped the brim of his hat against the knees of his trousers, sending up little clouds of dust into the air. It wasn't until he turned around that he saw her. Kierin was standing back some twenty feet away, holding the wilted bouquet of wildflowers she'd picked for Ben's grave. His gut tightened at the sight of her. He thought she'd gone back with the others.

Their eyes met over the freshly turned mound—hers filled with pain, his, hardened against it. Weighing his options and finding them seriously lacking, he nodded curtly to her and started toward the wagon.

"Clay..." Kierin called as he passed, halting him midstride.

He stood with his back to her, silent.

"Clay," she said again. "I'll miss him, too."

"I know," he answered, not turning around. He held himself stiffly, turning his hat between his fingers, staring out across the deepening sunset.

She walked toward him and rested a hand on his arm. "We're friends, aren't we?" Her voice was gentle and pleading. "Will you just walk away from me and not let me comfort you?"

Ben's last words rang in his ears—
Bend a little,
he'd said,
she'll come to you.
Clay let out an audible breath. Here she was, offering him the very thing he craved. Why was it so goddammed hard to accept it? For so long, he'd depended on no one to comfort him, share his thoughts or his pain. Now...

Bend a little,
the voice persisted.

Kierin's pulse fluttered as he turned toward her, letting her glimpse the grief in his eyes.

Wordlessly, he pulled her into the circle of his arms and pressed his face against her hair. With her cheek against his shoulder she felt him give in to the pain he'd been holding inside.

"It all happened so fast," he told her in a choked whisper.

"I know," she soothed. "There was nothing you could have done. Billy told me what happened."

Clay nodded against her hair. "One minute he was there and the next he was gone. It just doesn't seem possible. He survived all those years in the mountains alone. Terrible winters, rabid wolves, wounds that would have killed a weaker man. He seemed indestructible. And then a damned buffalo gets the better of him. I can't fathom life without him here. I'd go years without seeing him, but I always knew I would again."

"I'm sorry. He loved you, Clay," she whispered. She felt his fingers splay across her back in answer.

"I know. I guess I've always known it." Clay pulled back, resting his forearms on Kierin's shoulder, and his forehead on hers. "He was a wise man. Wiser than I ever knew."

Kierin nodded against the warmth of Clay's skin. Would she ever be able to forget the feel of his body against hers?

"Did you know he was in love with Joey?" he asked.

"I guessed as much."

"He told me she was his one regret."

Kierin drew back, her gaze meeting the sudden intensity of his. "I—I think Joey loved him too."

"I believe you're right. In her way. I think all these years he regretted not settling down and marrying her before Henri beat him to it." Clay looked down at the mound of earth at their feet and back into her eyes. He swallowed hard before he spoke again. "Is that what's going to become of us, Kierin?"

Heat rushed to her face. "Us?"

His fingers caressed the back of her neck. "Yeah." Then he repeated, softer this time, "Us."

Confused, Kierin searched the gold-flecked blue of his eyes. "I—I thought... we decided—"

"No,
you
decided. I conceded."

Fearful of being swayed again, she dropped her chin to her chest and looked at the tops of his boots. "And I was right. Under the circumstances... it's the best thing."

He tipped two fingers under her chin and brought it up to meet his gaze. "For who?" he asked in frustration. "You? Me? Hell, for us?"

"Wh—what are you saying? That we should go on as we were? Fighting each other at every turn? Making ourselves miserable over—"

"Wanting each other?" he finished.

"Yes," she blurted, but horrified by the bald-faced truth of it, she took it back. "No." A chorus of striped frogs chirped on the riverbank, mocking her denial. "Oh, I don't know anymore."

He bracketed her shoulders with his hands. "I do. I want you. I admit it. But it's gone way beyond that for me." He paused, and his Adam's apple bobbed like a cork in a stream. "And no matter what you say, I think it has for you, too. Look me in the eye, Kierin, and tell me I'm wrong."

"I—" Denial caught in her throat when she saw the earnest expression in his eyes. Was it possible? Could he care about her after all? "You're not wrong." she admitted after a long pause. "But—"

His mouth dropped to cover hers in censure, chasing away her arguments. A muffled groan came from deep in his throat when she relaxed almost instantly against him, reaching up to meet his kiss with an urgency of her own. The bouquet slipped, forgotten, from her fingers.

With his open mouth on hers she breathed deeply of his scent; the masculine smell of his skin; his hair where it fell against her cheek. She committed it all to memory in case this was all just a dream.

He lifted his head reluctantly, his breathing harsh and fast. He pulled back so he could see her. "I love you, Kierin. Hell, it took Ben's dying to make me realize it, but I do. I never thought I'd love a woman again, but life is too short and precarious to let this get by us. I love you," he repeated, slower this time.

Shock raced through her, churning her thoughts and emotions like a wind eddy. "Oh, Clay—"

"I never thought I'd hear myself saying those words to anyone again," he said, throwing his head back with relief. "I was a walking dead man before I met you. Now I can't imagine my life without you in it. I don't want to imagine it anymore." He paused, searching her eyes. "Marry me."

She stared at him in astonishment, unable to speak.

"Marry me, Kierin," he repeated.

His thumb ran across her cheek with such tenderness it made her heart swell with love.

"We can make each other happy," he said. "I know we can. I don't have much to offer you. Just a burned-out piece of land, but it's got possibilities. We can build a life together there. What do you say?"

She pulled him closer, hugging him tightly to her. She wanted to tell him yes. She wished life were as simple as that. But it wasn't.

How could he love her when nearly all they'd done since they'd met was fight? Fight each other's stubbornness and even each other's fear. For her part, fear of what she couldn't control. Fear of being controlled. More sadly, she realized now, fear that even if love came up and smacked her between the eyes, she wouldn't recognize it. Because she felt unworthy of the kind of love he was offering her.

When she stared out at the prairie grasses whose golden heads bobbed in the gentle wind like an ocean wave, he took her face between his large hands and forced her to look at him.

"Why can't you believe it could be possible for us, Kierin?"

"Oh, Clay—I've never felt this way about anyone before. But don't you see? I... I can't marry you."

The smile slipped from his face like a sunset stripped of its color. "Why not?"

"Because I've made a promise to myself and to my brother that I'd find him." Miserable, she looked down at her hands. "I have to go to California when we reach the West."

"I'll come with you."

"What?"

"I'll come with you—help you find him. With two looking, it's bound to go faster," he told her. "Anyway, you have no idea what it's like down there in the gold country. It's no place for a woman alone."

She shook her head. "I... couldn't ask that of you."

"You didn't ask. I'm volunteering. As soon as we reach Oregon and get Jacob and Dove settled, well take a packet down the coast. We'll find him."

"But... your ranch..."

A hopeful smile eased the lines of concern on his face. "It's survived without me this long. I guess it can stand a few more months."

Kierin lowered her eyes from his gaze and flattened her palms over the firm muscles of his chest. She didn't want to consider the possibility that all this was simply his overwrought emotions speaking, but she had no choice. She couldn't bear it if he took it all back later after thinking it through.

"Are you... sure all this is what you want?" she asked. "Ben's death has been a shock. Maybe it's made you say things..."

He pulled her close to him again. "No," he said, silencing her question. "Ben's death has just reminded me how little time we all have here and how important it is not to waste it. I know what I want and it's you. Time won't change the way I feel right now and I've never been more sure of anything in my life."

"Oh, Clay!" she cried, and hugged him tightly. "Then yes. I'll marry you. I will."

She felt the smile on his lips as he kissed her again, this time gently, almost gratefully. She ran her fingers through his hair, taking a moment to envision herself doing this for the rest of her life with him.

He blew out a shaky breath as he freed her mouth and leaned his chin against the top of her head. "We're only a few days out of Fort Laramie. I'll make arrangements with the fort's chaplain to marry us in a private ceremony—away from prying eyes." His lips brushed her hair again as if they couldn't be coaxed away from it. "But in every way that counts, Kierin, you're my wife already."

Nothing he could have said would have touched her as those words did. "I love you Clay. With all my heart."

They held each other while the sun settled below the far bluffs. The sky to the west of them was deepening to the cobalt blue of dusk and the first glittering stars appeared above them. They started back toward the wagon, arms wrapped around each other, when Jacob's dark figure approached them at a run. He was out of breath.

Clay put his hand on Jacob's arm. "What is it, Jacob?"

"It's Dove." Fear tinged his deep baritone voice. "She be in pain somethin' awful. Her child comin'. She be askin' for you, Miss Kierin."

"Oh, no," Kierin whispered. "It's too soon."

"Yes'm. That's what Dove say." Jacob's worried eyes probed hers intently. "She say the pains started on the hunt, right after—" He didn't need to finish his thought. They all knew what had brought Dove's labor on.