Authors: Barbara Ankrum
She was sound asleep and that was just what she needed.
The wolf, who had placed herself between him and Jesse, edged closer, shuffling forward on all fours until her nose was inches from Creed's hand. She sniffed with covert curiosity, then yawned and lay her head back down between her paws. Creed shifted uncomfortably, glancing at Jesse. "Has your wolf had dinner yet?"
Jesse chuckled. "You should recognize that look by now, old friend. You always did have a way with the ladies."
Creed sent him a withering look. "Where did you get her?"
"From old Sun Weasel's sits-beside-him wife, Crow Woman, up on the Bear. Said the pup was big medicine for me cause she was half-dog, half-wolf and because we looked alike." He scratched his thick beard. "She calls me
Imoyinum.
That's 'Looks Furry' to the Pikunis." He laughed. "I guess she was right. Frankly, I think the old woman just wanted to be shed of the animal. Makes a damn pest of herself."
Mahkwi thumped her tail and laid her head obligingly in Jesse's lap. He grinned and scratched her behind the ears. "But she's kinda grown on me. An' I get damn few prowlers around my campfire at night, if you know what I mean."
"Personally," Creed observed with a smile, "I think you're lucky old Sun Weasel and his bunch didn't decide to lift that pretty hair of yours. I'm surprised you've kept it this long."
"Hell," Jesse scoffed, running a hand through his blond locks, "I supply his bunch and half the other Blackfeet tribes with their monthly supply of trade goods—which keep their womenfolk happy and their pipes full with twists of tobacco."
Creed sent him a measured glance. "Whiskey?"
Jesse looked offended. "I don't deal in that. You know that, Creed." He lifted the flask and winked. "This is my own particular poison. Besides, I got my eye on a pretty little Pikuni maiden, about this high,"—his hand sliced across his ample chest, then formed an hourglass—"shaped just so. Wouldn't do my cause any good to go getting her family all stirred up with firewater, would it?"
"You planning on settling down?"
Jesse shot him a strangled look, then laughed. "Not particularly. It's crossed my mind a time or two though."
Creed shrugged. It surprised him to hear Jesse mention a woman. Creed had known him since he was young and green, before he had carved a place for himself in the Montana wilderness. Jesse wasn't the settling down type any more than he was. He was a roamer. A dreamer. A man with a penchant for trouble.
Like you,
a voice said. A lone, gray-crowned goshawk circled high on the wind currents above them, let out its shrill
kek-kek-kek,
then vanished beyond the trees.
He glanced at Mariah's sleeping form and felt a pang of regret that he had never settled down, found a woman like her. It occurred to him that he and Jesse had a lot in common. A good four years younger than Creed, Jesse didn't talk much about his family anymore. But he recognized the look in his eyes, recognized the loneliness.
"What about you? You thinkin' of settling down?"
Jesse's question pulled him from his thoughts.
"Me?"
He tipped his head in Mariah's direction. "She's a pretty one, all right, even half-drowned."
Creed sobered and looked at his hands. "Hell, I almost lost her today. She wasn't even breathing when I pulled her out."
Jesse searched his face. "Lucky," was all he said, but Creed knew what he meant.
"She's not mine."
The flask halted halfway to Jesse's lips. "Who the hell is she?"
Creed dug his sock-covered heels into the deep carpet of pine needles. "She's promised to a friend of mine. Seth Travers."
"The storekeeper down in Alder Gulch?"
Creed nodded, unable to look Jesse in the eye for fear he'd see what was in his heart.
Jesse whistled quietly. "I know Travers. He's a good man. I, uh, reckon there's a good reason why she's out here in the middle of nowhere with you."
Creed nearly laughed. "It's a long story, believe me. The truth is, Seth was supposed to meet her up at Benton, but he took sick."
"Hellfire. Bad?"
"Camp fever. It might even be the pneumonia. It was plenty bad when I left."
Raking a hand through his long hair, he asked, "She knows, o' course."
"That's why she's traipsing all over the countryside with me instead of staying back at the stage station like I told her to.
Merde.
She is, without a doubt, the stubbornest female I've ever run across."
Jesse took another pull on the flask, watching Creed closely. "Women. They're kinda like a jug of water to a man dyin' of thirst. A little'll keep him goin'. The whole shebang'll kill him."
Smiling, Creed took the bacanora from his old friend, but didn't drink. He had believed that once about women. Until he'd met Mariah. Now? Hell, he felt thirsty all the time and he doubted she could ever quench the burn.
Jesse stared into the flames for a long time before he spoke again. "Old Skinny Taylor down in Bannack told me about Antoine." He shook his head. "He was a good friend. I was damn sorry to hear about it." Emotion tugged at his boyish features. "Your pa didn't deserve that kinda end."
Rubbing a hand over his eyes, Creed sighed. "No one does."
"What's it been? Five years? I thought I'd run into you before this, but I never did."
"I've been on the move a lot."
"I heard it was the LaRousse brothers."
Creed's fists tightened involuntarily and he took a drink as Jesse's gaze went to the choker at Creed's throat.
"Skinny said they almost killed you, too. That true?"
Creed winced, remembering. "One day, they'll both regret not finishing the job."
"You're still hunting them, then?"
Creed glanced up at him. "Only one of them, now. I put a bullet in Étienne at Benton a few days ago."
Jesse whistled low, picked a stalk from a clump of sweetgrass, and stuck it between his teeth. "I've never had the misfortune of meeting them, but he and Pierre have gotten quite a reputation around these parts in the past few years. None of it good. Word has it they were hooked up with Frank Plummer's gang of cutthroats up at Robber's Roost. I guess you heard the vigilantes hung Plummer and his deputy, Boone Helm, this past January in the Gulch along with the rest of them."
Creed grunted and took another swig. "They missed a few."
"Yeah. There's always a few flies that miss the flypaper. They were tight, those LaRousse brothers. I don't reckon Pierre will take his brother's death well." He met Creed's gaze with a silent warning. "I reckon it might just flush him out of the floorboards."
"I'm counting on it."
Jesse nodded thoughtfully. "It's a dangerous business."
"Oui,"
Creed's smile was grim. "It's a danger I welcome."
A laugh rumbled through Jesse's chest. "You're one crazy sonofabitch, Devereaux. I'd almost forgotten how much I liked you."
"What about you,
mon ami?"
Creed asked. "Been bitten by the gold bug yet?"
He let out a bark of laughter. "Hell, no. I make enough to pay my way. That's good enough for me. No, I've been here and there. Still some good trappin' up around Two Medicine Lake and Cut Bank Creek. I spent last winter with the Pikunis and learned a thing or two." He grinned. "Or three."
Creed glanced up at Jesse, envying his love of the footloose life. He knew Jesse's family were farmers back in Ohio and that Jesse had left at the tender age of sixteen for the West. He'd told him once it would have killed him to stay there. Creed believed him.
His family hadn't taken his decision well and considered him
la brebis galeuse,
the black sheep, and for that matter, so did Jesse. He'd lived with Creed and his father for the first several years, apprenticing to Antoine and learning the ropes in trading. Jesse had done well for himself.
"Have you heard from your family?"
Jesse sighed, lacing his fingers together. "Not for a few years. I suppose my father hasn't forgiven me for leaving. I guess he never will." He shrugged. "Ma, she doesn't want to cross him."
"Think you'll ever go back home?"
"Back?" He looked horrified at the notion and shook his head. "It's not my home anymore. Hasn't been for a long time now." Squinting at the shining snow-covered peaks that towered over them, he sighed. "I live here now."
Creed noticed he hadn't called Montana home either. For men like Jesse, home was wherever a bedroll could be flung on the ground. Creed thought of the mud-chinked log cabin he and his father had shared near the Boulder River.
It was still standing, he guessed, though he'd spent precious little time there in the past few years. It was a place to hang his hat in the dead of winter, a place to go where the world would leave him alone.
Creed shrugged. "I don't know. Family ties can be good things to hang onto. Sometimes, I wish..."
Jesse frowned. "Wish what?"
Wish I had a family to go back to. Or a woman.
Creed smiled sadly, clapped him on the back and stood up.
"Cela ne fait rien.
It's nothing. Must be that rotgut of yours making me sentimental, no?"
He glanced at the unloaded pack mules grazing on the river's edge and the heavy bundles of pelts and trade goods stacked under the sprawling ponderosa nearby. "You were headed somewhere today."
"The Gulch," he answered. "I've got some skins to sell and I need to restock some supplies."
"You could ride along with us." As he said it, Creed realized the idea had merit on more than one level, considering what had happened between him and Mariah. "If you can wait until tomorrow. I don't think Mariah's going to be up to any more riding today."
Jesse slapped his knees and got to his feet. "Thanks. Maybe I will," he allowed, reaching for his rifle. "I think I'll go scare up somethin' for supper. I'm hungry as a bear. Get some rest yourself, my friend." He disappeared into the thicket of trees, heading toward the steep-walled canyon to the north.
Creed was tired. Suddenly, very tired. He grabbed his rifle, threw a blanket on the ground beside Mariah, and stretched out next to her. He watched her eyelashes flutter in sleep, the way her lips curved up naturally at the corners, and the smooth, freckle-spattered curve of her cheek.
Reaching out, he smoothed one finger down that softness and watched her lips curl up in an unconscious smile. But it was what she did next that made him draw back his hand as if he'd been burned.
In her sleep, she whispered his name.
* * *
Mariah slept through the rest of that day and night, rousing only to partake of a small meal of roast rabbit Creed forced her to eat before putting her back to bed. By morning, she awoke feeling renewed and better than she had in days.
Creed set a slower pace for them that day and the next, stopping frequently for short rests and pulling up for the night while there was plenty of daylight left. She managed on the second day to build a passable fire and, with some success, took over the cooking chore of roasting the brace of rabbits Jesse had shot.
Of course, Creed kept the reins of the coffee-making and she endured his barbs about the toxic mud she'd managed to produce.
They'd crossed at a shallow ford of the Dearborn River the second day and he'd insisted she ride double with him, even though only their feet got wet. Aside from that, he'd pointedly kept his distance, staying in the lead and speaking to her only if she asked him a direct question.
Thank God for Jesse, she thought. He'd kept her company through the long days of riding, telling her stories about his travels or walking along beside her when she needed to stretch her legs. In the short time they'd known one another, they'd become friends.
Mahkwi would disappear for long periods during their days, exploring higher into the slopes that paralleled their trail, following the unfettered instincts of her ancestors. Inevitably, she would come at Jesse's shrill whistle, loping toward them on her long, graceful wolf-legs. Her wildness seemed to give her boundless energy and she was rarely even winded when she came into camp.
Often as not, she came to Creed for attention. She would lay her head in his lap and roll onto her back, demanding a scratch. The gesture of utter trust was one of the few things that brought a smile to Creed's lips. Mahkwi would send him a golden-eyed gaze, tongue lolling, basking in his touch.
The wolf's infatuation with Creed was something Mariah understood. She, too, remembered the magic of his touch, the comfort of his smile.
There were times when she'd caught Creed watching her when he thought she didn't see. A shiver of awareness would ripple through her at those times, as if she could almost feel the heat of his gaze. Yesterday, while they ate a cold lunch and Jesse entertained them with stories of grizzlies he'd known, she'd even dared to return Creed's stare. To her surprise, he hadn't looked away, but held her gaze for a long, heart-stopping moment.
Thinking back on the longing she'd seen in his eyes made her knees go weak and her pulse thud at the base of her throat. Little things, like the way he tilted his head or the way his slender fingers smoothed the piece of wood he was whittling, reminded her of the way he'd held her that day by the river. There was no denying that something had changed, shifted unalterably between them.