Merline Lovelace (2 page)

Through his haze of agonizing pain the Frenchman recognized the same awful truth. His one remaining eye fixed on Daniel. With an effort that brought blood spewing from his lips, he whispered a few tortured words.

“Take care…of my Louis.”

“I will.”

“Swear…it!”

“I swear.”

A red bubble formed on Chartier’s lips. Before it burst, the Frenchman was dead.

Daniel stayed hunkered down beside the body. Warm blood drenched his hands. Cold air stabbed into his lungs like a bayonet. After the cougar’s high-pitched screams and the fury of the attack, the sudden silence thundered in his ears.

He dragged in another shuddering breath and swiveled on his heels to view the dead animal. The cougar’s ribs stuck out like barrel staves under its tawny hide. If there was a pound of flesh anywhere on the beast, Daniel couldn’t see it. What looked like a bent and broken foreleg gave some clue to its near starvation. The creature couldn’t run, couldn’t chase its normal prey. But it could pounce.

Slowly, Daniel pushed to his feet. A soldier’s life was precarious at best. Between bouts of boring garrison duty, he stood a good chance of being blown apart by a British cannonball, taking a Spanish bayonet to the gut or losing his scalp to a warrior from one of the fierce tribes that roamed the forests and plains. Even here, in this land of majestic beauty, violent death was just a heartbeat away. Daniel’s glance swept the snow-capped crags, dropped to the ribbons of silver glistening far below.

Chartier would get his wish. He’d be buried here, where the river ran and the eagles flew.

Grunting with the effort, Daniel hauled loose rocks to mound over the Frenchman’s body. He was sweating beneath his buckskins and buffalo coat by the
time he cut and stripped two small branches. Tying them with a bit of rawhide cut from the fringe of his hunting buckskins, he planted the crude cross on the mound of rocks.

He thought about gutting the cougar and hauling the carcass back to camp, but there wasn’t enough meat on the creature’s bones to feed a flock of crows, let alone eight hungry men. He left it for the scavengers.

Except the claws. Those he decided to take to Chartier’s boy. The lad might want to make a necklace of them, take medicine from the fierce spirit of the cat that killed the trapper.

Dropping the claws into his leather cartridge case, Daniel gathered Chartier’s musket and hunting knife and started back down the ridge. He no longer had either the time or the desire to view the supposed Viking marks that had lured him up the bluff.

What he did have, he thought grimly, was an unexpected charge. What the devil was he going to do with the boy? He was still pondering the best way to honor his vow when he approached the Frenchman’s camp for the second time.

The lad was still down at the stream. He appeared hard at work, but the faint crunch of boots on snow brought his head whipping around. He crouched there, the bloody skinning knife clutched in his fist. His eyes narrowed to slits as they took in the two muskets Daniel carried.

“Où est Henri?”

Approaching slowly, Daniel searched his mind for
the few French phrases he’d picked up over the years. “Henri is
mort. Fini.
”

Under the bulk of his wolfskin cap and buffalo robe, the lad went still. The fingers clutching the knife turned white at the knuckles.

“A mountain cat got him.”

Still the boy didn’t move. Propping the two muskets against the bale of furs, Daniel curled his fingers into talons.

“Puma. Panther.”

He raised an arm to rake a hand across his throat in a grotesque pantomime of the trapper’s death. Before he could complete the gesture, the boy’s lips curled back.

“Muerte!”

Spitting the word like a curse, he launched himself through the air much as the cougar had up on the ridge. His buffalo robe tumbled away from his shoulders. His wolfskin cap flew off. His eyes blazed with fury.

In the space of mere seconds, Daniel made two startling discoveries. The boy’s eyes were blue, a deep, sapphire blue. And
he
looked very much like a
she.

Daniel formed a fleeting impression of glossy, waist-length black hair. Of high cheekbones and a pointed chin. Of small, proud breasts molded by a doeskin tunic.

Then he, like Chartier, went down under the weight of a snarling, spitting she-cat.

D
aniel landed flat on his back, felled by a hundred pounds of feral fury. Only his hard-learned combat skills kept him from receiving or inflicting real pain. Not an easy task while dodging sharp knees to the groin, elbows to the windpipe and a well-honed skinning knife. It took some doing, but he managed to catch his assailant’s wrists in a tight grip.

“Enough!”

She—yes, it was definitely a she—ignored the sharp command and butted her head forward.

Daniel took a solid whack to the nose. Swearing, he transferred both of her wrists to one hand and grabbed a thick hank of hair. A vicious tug brought her head back and her chin pointed at the sky.

Still she fought. Her lips curled away from her teeth. Her body contorted atop his. She got a knee loose and damned near unmanned him.

Grunting, Daniel blocked the vicious thrust with his thigh, dug a heel into the ground and rolled them both over. His weight squeezed the breath right out
of her. Squashed into the snow, she squirmed and gasped and jerked.

“Enough, I said!”

He didn’t know whether it was his angry bellow that finally stilled her struggles or his dead weight crushing her into the snow. Whatever the reason, she went limp. Unmoving except for the quick, tortured rise and fall of her chest, she glared up at him.

She was a good bit older than the stripling he’d first thought, he saw. Closer to a woman than a girl. Despite her slender build, the breasts mashed against his chest felt full and round, her flanks long and firm. And she had the damnedest eyes. As deep and blue as a high mountain lake.

Chartier must have passed them to her. The trapper’s eyes had been blue, too, but not the same mesmerizing shade of his daughter’s. Fringed by thick, ink-black lashes, they drew a man in and left him to drown.

For a moment, Daniel forgot he was deep in uncharted territory, forgot the troop of hungry soldiers waiting for him. For the oddest space of time, he saw only a backdrop of white snow. A spill of hair as black as obsidian. Full, red lips set in a defiant line. A blaze of blue fire. She was as wild and dangerous and beautiful as the land that had bred her. Shaking his head, he broke the spell.

“
Parlez
English?”

She didn’t respond except to set her jaw. Daniel gave her hair another yank.

“Do you talk English?”

“Yes!” she hissed. “I have the
anglais.
Also a little of the
español.
”

“Good.”

Very good, since Daniel had pretty much used up his entire repertoire of foreign phrases.

“I didn’t kill Chartier,” he said, spacing each word slowly and distinctly. “It was a mountain cat. Puma. Cougar.”

Jaw tight, she eyed him for a long moment. “Is that the cry I hear?”

A panther’s scream could carry for miles on this thin, cold air. He should have realized the girl would hear it and wonder whether it had been made by man or beast.

“Yes, that was the cry you heard.”

“You say… You say this cat kills Henri?”

“I brought the claws to prove to you I speak the truth.”

“Show me.”

He knew better than to react too quickly to that imperious demand. The fight wasn’t gone out of her yet. Or the suspicion. The moment he rolled away from her, she’d have her razor-edged blade to his throat.

“I’ll show you,” he countered, “when you let loose of your knife.”

Her black brows slashed together. Her body tensed under his. They lay in the snow, chest to chest, hip to hip, while she mulled over her choices in the matter. Finally she realized she had only one. Her fingers loosed their grip on the skinning knife.

Releasing her hair, Daniel took possession of the weapon. The handle was wrapped in bits of rawhide woven with red yarn and fit awkwardly in his hand, but he kept a sure grip on it as he levered himself up. Freed of his weight, the woman drew in a long, shuddering breath and struggled upright. Regret lanced into Daniel when he saw the angry marks banding her wrists. He hadn’t intended to bruise her like that.

He reached down a hand to help her up. Spurning his aid, she scrambled to her feet, dusted the snow from her backside and snatched up her buffalo robe. With the heavy hide draped over her shoulders to block the cold, she reissued her imperious demand.

“Show me.”

He dug the claws out of his cartridge case. They lay in his palm, curving, sharp-tipped bits of black still streaked with the blood of the cat and the man it had savaged.

She reached out and closed a hand over the gory trophies. Clenching her fist, she brought it to her breast. Her extraordinary eyes showed no trace of emotion, but the skin stretched taut over her high cheekbones and moved Daniel to pity.

“I buried Chartier up there,” he said gruffly, “on the bluff.”

Her glance went to the snow-covered ridge. “It is where he wished to lie.”

“Your father asked me to take care of you.”

Her gaze slewed back. “What do you say?”

“Your father. With his last breath, he asked me to take care of you.”

“You think Henri is my father?”

“Isn’t he?”

“
Imbécile!
He is my husband. For five winters now.”

“The hell you say!”

The old buzzard must have taken her into his bed before she’d laid aside her corncob dolls. Disgusted, Daniel shook his head.

Her chin came up. Mistaking his disgust for disbelief, she gave him a look that would have frozen the Arkansaw if it didn’t already wear a coat of ice.

“Our marriage is done by a priest,” she announced haughtily. “The same priest who baptizes me and gives me my name.”

“Louis?”

“Lou-
ise.
Louise Therese. Before I am Wah-shi-tu, but Henri, he and the priest say now I am Louise. I am Henri’s wife,” she repeated, more fiercely this time. “The beaver we take from the streams are mine.”

“Don’t get your dander up. I don’t want your furs.”

Her inky black brows slashed together. “What is this dander?”

“It’s… Well—”

Come to think on it, Daniel didn’t rightly know what the devil it was.

“All I’m saying is that I’m not trying to lay claim to the beaver you and your, uh, husband trapped.”

He stumbled over the word, still struggling with the idea of the near-toothless Frenchman mounting this supple young beauty. Struggling, as well, with the dilemma of what to do with her.

“I don’t know if you caught my name when I gave it before,” he said. “It’s Daniel. Daniel Morgan, Rifle Sergeant with the Second United States Regiment of Infantry.”

She made no response, as if she didn’t give two hoots who he was.

“What about you?” Daniel prodded. “Who are your people?”

“My father was of the French, like Henri. Or so I have been told.”

Well, that explained her eyes.

“Your mother?”

She chewed on her lower lip, as if debating how much to tell him. She was a suspicious thing, but Daniel didn’t blame her. He’d come out of nowhere, climbed a ridge with her husband and returned with a set of bloody claws.

“My mother was of the Osage,” she said at last. “From the Quapaw Tribe.”

Relief seeped into Daniel. Quapaw was the Indian name for “those who went downstream,” denoting a clan of Osage that had broken away from their main tribe some years back and moved south along the Arkansaw. Called the Arkansaw Osage at first, the tribe had become known by the shortened name, Quapaw. Establishing contact with this prosperous clan was a secondary goal of the expedition. Since
their winter camp lay only a few days’ march to the south, Daniel could get Chartier’s widow to her people.

“I made a promise to your husband to see you safe. I’ll take you to the Quapaw winter camp…”

“No!”

“…and leave you there.”

“No, I say!”

“They’re your tribe. Why the devil don’t you want to go to them?”

Her chin came up. “My uncle is chief of the Quapaw. When my mother dies, my uncle takes me into his lodge, but—”

“But what?”

She took her lip between her teeth again, worrying it. She started to say something, changed her mind and finished with a toss of her head. “My uncle sells me to Henri to be rid of me. I will not go where I am not wanted.”

“You have to go somewhere. I damn sure can’t leave you here.”

The stubborn set to her jaw told Daniel that’s exactly what she wanted him to do.

“Just think for a moment. Your man’s dead. Winter’s hard on us and there’s more snow coming. If you don’t freeze to death, you could well starve.”

“I know these mountains. I will not freeze
or
starve.”

He was tempted, sorely tempted, to wash his hands of her. Damned if she wasn’t a mulish bit of fur and feathers. But a promise was a promise, and Daniel
Morgan had never yet gone back on his given word. Closing his mind to the protests he knew his lieutenant would rain down on his head, he suggested another course.

“How about this? You travel with my detachment until we reach a settlement or trading post where you can sell your furs for enough supplies to get you through the winter. Then you can go where you will.”

She cocked her head, studying him through still suspicious eyes. “Why do you do this?”

“I told you. I made a promise to Chartier.”

“You’ll take me
and
the furs?”

“Didn’t I just say so?”

She tapped the toe of her bulky bearskin boot. Eyes narrowed behind those thick black lashes, she looked him up and down. Daniel felt himself being weighed and measured. He was half expecting her to order him to bare his teeth for inspection when she gave a reluctant nod.

“I come with you.”

He couldn’t decide if he was more relieved or sorry. Thinking that he’d just saddled himself with a whole peck of trouble, he handed her back her knife and kept a wary eye on her movements while she stooped down to clean the blade in the snow. Rising, she slid the rib-sticker into a beaded sheath at her waist.

“Bundle what you can carry into that haversack,” he instructed. “I’ll pack up the meat from the beaver you just skinned.”

Beaver steak took a good bit more chewing than deer, but it was too late to follow those tracks in the snow. He was thankful that the beaver meat was cut into neat strips ready for frying or smoking. The girl—woman—had done her job well.

Hell, he couldn’t decide just how to think of her. She moved with the grace of a young deer. Her skin was fresh and smooth and clear, with none of the lines carved by wind and sun. Yet five years of sharing a blanket with a grizzled old trapper certainly took her out of the category of girl and gave her the status of a woman.

Shutting out the image of her slender legs wrapped around Chartier’s waist, Daniel stuffed the strips into the canvas pouch he carried with him on hunting expeditions and topped them with the livers, hearts and other edible organs. There was enough to feed his men one solid meal, anyway. Tomorrow, he’d have to bring down more game.

With the pouch thudding heavy against his hip, he crossed the clearing to the bale of furs. The woman was on her knees, retying the rawhide strips to include the fresh-scraped pelts. She left wide loops and had just bent to slip an arm through one when Daniel stopped her.

“I’ll carry that. You take the haversack.”

As big and full muscled as he was, Daniel had to strain to lift the bale. Good Christ above! Chartier had let his wife tote this load? Evidently the Frenchman had got himself a packhorse as well as a bedmate when he’d bought her from the Osage.

Leaning forward, he hefted the weight higher on his shoulders. “You ready?”

She coiled her hair under the wolfskin cap, slung the haversack over one shoulder and wrapped a fur-mittened fist around Chartier’s musket. Her gaze swept the camp a final time before lifting to the ridge where her husband was buried.

When her blue eyes turned back to Daniel, they were flat and expressionless. “I am ready.”

Daniel fully expected the high-strung Lieutenant Wilkinson to fly into a nervous fit when his sergeant returned to camp with a very young and very recent widow in tow. What he didn’t expect was to find the officer down with a raging fever.

Wilkinson thrashed about on a bed of pine boughs. Sweat ran down his temples and drenched the tattered remains of the uniform jacket he wore under his buffalo robe.

“When did the fever come on him?” Daniel asked Private Huddleston.

“’Bout an hour after you left.”

Sullen-faced and demoralized by the tribulations of the past few months, the private shifted his glance from his sergeant to the fur-clad figure standing behind him.

The rest of the small troop was just as curious. John Boley and Sam Bradley, almost as disgruntled as Huddleston these days. John Wilson, a skilled hunter and outdoorsman who still sprang to orders with some degree of respect. The two Osage guides,
Nan-wa-sa, or Wind That Cries, and Pa-tu-she-ga, called One Eye by the men because of the drooping lid that all but covered his right eyeball.

Surveying his small detachment, Daniel had to admit they made a sorry sight. The soldiers’ few remaining uniform items were little more than rags. Their boots had long since rotted away and been replaced by hides tied in bulky bundles over their frostbitten feet. Red rimmed their eyes. Scraggly beards covered their cheeks. Even the lieutenant now bore more resemblance to a rough-planed woodsman than the overly fastidious officer who’d left St. Louis six months ago. Worried by the young officer’s condition, Daniel deposited the bale of furs in the snow and went down on one knee beside him.

“Lieutenant? Can you hear me?”

Wilkinson turned to the sound of his voice. Mumbling incoherently, he lifted a clenched fist and let it drop.

“It’s Sergeant Morgan. I’ve brought fresh meat.”

He dragged the heavy pouch over his shoulder and passed it to an eager Private Boley.

“Put some on to boil for the lieutenant before you fry up the rest. A hearty broth may help break his fever. The rest of you, roll out your blankets and prepare a bivouac area. We’ll spend the night here. Huddleston, you and Wilson have first watch. Bradley and I will take second.”