Stone Dreaming Woman (23 page)

She looked past him, into the moon-dappled shadows of the rose bed behind them, taking stock of herself. One thing was certain. She knew she loved Shane Adair as she would never—could never, she amended—love another. She took a long, slow breath to calm herself. Even after something as serious as the stolen, contraband kisses, his undemanding presence lay lightly upon her soul, and that made him all the more dear.

“I think we’d better go in,” he said softly. She felt his breath stir her hair. “Marie and Bob will wonder what became of us.” He rose and offered her his arm again, and when she interwove her fingers around the crook of his elbow, he covered her hands with his opposite palm. She wondered if her feet would ever touch the ground again.

Chapter Twelve

The next morning she woke when Juliette opened the velvet drapes and let the crystalline morning light spill across the bed. She burrowed out from under the covers, and the pink mist of the previous evening dissolved, leaving her wrapped in the warmth of Shane’s last kiss. As she rubbed the sleep from her eyes she remembered the “Emperor Waltz.”

“I trust Mademoiselle spent a good night?” Juliette asked politely.

“Yes, Juliette. I slept very well, thank you,” Jenny replied, yawning and stretching away the last of her sleep.

“Madame instructed me to tell you that breakfast will be served shortly. Is there anything else you need now, Mademoiselle?”

“No, thank you, Juliette. You may go. Thank Madame for me, and tell her I’ll be down right away.”

“
Oui, Mademoiselle
,” Juliette replied, bobbing half a curtsey from the doorway. Jenny climbed into her riding clothes and washed her face, then pulled the pins from her hair. Because she had gone directly to bed without braiding it, it was full of what her mother called “mouse nests” and other snarls and tangles. She was in the midst of conquering the mess when she heard various shrieks, growls, snarls, giggles, and thumps in the hall. She pulled her door open to see Shane lying on his back in the middle of the Wilton hall runner. Frances was sitting on his chest and Jacqueline on his ankles. Elise was on her knees next to them, and she looked up as Jenny came out.

“My, what have we here?” she asked.

“We catched a bear,” Frances said with a cheesy grin.

“Caught,” Elise corrected with big-sister superiority.

“They catched me, all right,” Shane said, shedding little girls as he picked himself up. “Come on, everybody. Go down to the table. We’ll be right along.” Elise took the two smaller girls by a hand apiece and led them down the stairs.

“You certainly were catched,” Jenny giggled.

“Oh, they do that to me all the time. They think it’s high fun to hide behind a door and ambush me.”

“And of course you let them.”

“Wouldn’t you? They have such a grand time at it.”

“Oh, yes, I imagine I would,” she responded, giving her hair a parting flick with the brush.

“Are you ready, then, Mademoiselle?” he asked, extending his arm gallantly. Ignoring her loose hair, she flipped the brush onto the bed and accepted the proffered escort.

Breakfast was as hectic an affair as the rest of the day-to-day life of the Shepherds. Jacqueline upset her milk in her lap, and Frances amused herself by dangling her braids in the syrup. Through it all, Marie and Bob remained implacably calm. Finally, with Jacqueline packed off for a change of clothing and most of the syrup washed from Frances, they bade their guests farewell. Shane was again in the midst of a heap of little girls scrambling to hug and kiss him goodbye. As usual, they all chattered at once in two languages. Jenny took Fleur’s reins from the stable boy, and as he was preparing to give her a hand up to the saddle, Frances’s voice rang out above the general clamor.

“Shane, are you going to marry Miss Weston?”

“If she’ll have me, sweetheart,” he replied, and Jenny felt her face grow hot.

“Then you can’t marry Jacqueline, and she
loves
you!” Frances wailed.

“I know all of you love me, but I’m much too old for any of you, even Elise. Now give me a hug. I have to leave.” He gathered all three into his arms. Jenny received the second round of little-girl hugs before the stable attendant boosted her to the saddle. Lunch was duly tucked into Shane’s saddlebags. However, Jenny’s saddle was unencumbered because Marie had volunteered to ship her clothes home on the Monday morning train. Only the fantastic jewelry was going back with her, the velvet bag wrapped in a scarf and tucked into a safe corner of her saddlebags. Fleur and Midnight received their share of pats, while Marie and Bob assured both Jenny and Shane they were welcome any time they wanted to come to River Bend. Waving back over his shoulder, Shane led the way down the driveway and out into the street.

“Poor Jacqueline,” Jenny mused. “I had my first episode of puppy love when I was about her age.”

“Oh? Who was the lucky gentleman?”

“He was my second cousin, Arthur Brisbane. He was in his mid-twenties at the time. He completely shattered me by spending a summer on the continent, marrying a British girl, and never coming home.”

“Insensitive lout, wasn’t he?”

“Oh, terribly.” She giggled.

“His loss was my gain.” His grey eyes sparkled at her. He turned out onto the main street that led to the railroad station. As soon as they were out of town, he pulled the black gelding to a halt.

“I have to get rid of this tunic. It’s just too warm. I itched all the way down yesterday,” he grumbled. He stripped off his lanyard and belt, and the tunic followed. He folded it carefully and tied it behind the cantle of his saddle. She loosened her reins and allowed Fleur to crop a few mouthfuls of the sparse grass along the edge of the right-of-way while she waited. He took the holstered pistol from his right saddlebag and carefully slipped it onto his belt, then buckled it around his waist.

“There. I feel a lot more like myself now,” he announced.

“You put your pistol back on,” she observed.

“I always carry it in the woods. I haven’t needed it very often, but…” His voice trailed off as he made certain his rifle was accessible.

“But you’ve been glad for it when you did?” she concluded tentatively.

“Oh, perhaps. As I said, there’s only once I’ve ever had to shoot at a person when I haven’t seen it coming first. I’m more afraid of animals. This is the beginning of rabies season, and wolves get that all the time. But that’s not a job for a pistol.” He patted the stock of the immense Model 1895. Jenny shivered. Though she was not the flighty type, the thought of rabies, with its universal fatality rate, never failed to send a chill down her spine. She was silent for quite a while as they rode side by side. Then she realized she did not know where she was.

“This isn’t the way we came, so I’m lost already,” she commented after a few minutes on the trail.

“No. Remember we’re going home over the high trail? What would you do if you were really lost?”

“Follow the river?” Jenny guessed.

“That’s good. If you follow a stream you’ll eventually get to civilization somewhere. But how about when there’s no stream close by?”

“I don’t know.”

“The best thing would be to give Fleur her head and let her take you home. I don’t think horses ever get lost.”

“You must not get lost easily either,” she commented. The trail had led them into the woods, rank with the deep smell of moss and summer-warm duff.

“No. Grandpère taught me well. He’d been in the woods all his life. He’d forgotten more about trapping and tracking than most people will ever know. He was even better than the Indians. Even now I can generally pick up a trail that none of the North Village men can find.”

“He sounds like a remarkable person.”

“He was, in more ways than one. He was artistic, kind, and gentle, with an unbelievable wit. Heaven only knows where he came by it, living all his life isolated out in the woods, but he was as full of yarns as a sea captain. He taught me to draw when I was very young, and he was so patient with my mistakes. He always regretted never learning to read, and when I went to mission school he made me read to him nearly every night. I tried to teach him, but by then his eyes were getting bad.” He was gazing up into the trees, lost in reminiscence. Jenny loved to start him talking about himself.

“I think you must take after him. You can certainly tell tales. The night you told Uncle Richard and me the story about the Wendigo and drew it, I had nightmares!”

He smiled gently. “I was fortunate to have the family I had. I wouldn’t trade my childhood with anyone. I didn’t even realize we were poor.” He came abruptly back to the present. “Remember I said I’d show you a beaver pond? We’re close to one now. It’s really huge, and there’s an old man beaver there that must weigh sixty pounds. He’s too wily for traps. I’ve seen him shove a branch into a trap and spring it deliberately.”

“Now that’s what I call smart.”

“I hope nobody ever gets him. He deserves to live a long life. We’re going that way.” He pointed to a trail branching off to the right, up a small creek that merged with the White Fork. Fleur turned obediently, content for Midnight to lead up the narrow trail. It was little more than a deer track, and branches kept tangling in Jenny’s loose hair. Once she lost her scarf and grabbed at it as it landed on Fleur’s rump. Impatiently she knotted her reins and let Fleur follow while she worked her hair up into a crude braid. Finally, when she thought she would have to protest if the going became any rougher, the trail leveled out and came into a clearing. Motioning her to be quiet, he dismounted. They tied the horses, and, moving as silently as she could manage, she followed him up to the edge of the trees. The beaver pond spread deep and dark before her. It was a very old pond, because a wide apron of meadow bordered it and the effluent end had silted nearly level with the dam. He crouched behind a big nurse log from which several small trees sprouted. She knelt beside him, and he pointed to the far end of the dam, where a huge beaver sat on a half-submerged log, grooming his coat.

“That’s him,” Shane whispered. She peeked over the log. The magnificent old animal had a pelt that glowed like satin in the sunlight, and he was meticulously preening every inch of it with the special combing claws on his hind feet. She watched him, fascinated, until Shane touched her shoulder and pointed upstream. She looked along his hand and saw a younger beaver swimming toward them at a leisurely pace, trailing a leafy branch behind him. They watched as the younger animal approached the dam, then dived abruptly, hauling the branch with him.

“Watch. I’ll show you what they do when there’s danger,” Shane said. Abruptly he jumped up with a whoop, raised his arms, and ran toward the pond. The big male hit the water and his tail came down on the surface with a resounding crack that reverberated like a gunshot. The ripples in the water died, and the pond was deserted. “They’ll be down for hours now. Come on. I’ll show you the dam and their lodges.” He extended his hand to her and helped her over the log but did not relinquish her hand as he led her down to the pond.

“Here’s a doe with twins,” he said, pointing to cloven hoof marks at the edge of the water. “Older does often drop more than one fawn. I’ve even seen quads once or twice. Those are this morning’s tracks. They probably came to drink at dawn. And see what looks like a pile of brush over near the opposite bank? That’s the beaver lodge. The entrance is under the water, and there’s a breathing hole at the top. The beavers seal them up with mud so well that even a wolverine can’t get in before the beavers have had time to escape. They have pathways under the water where they always swim. In some ponds you can actually see their trackways through the weeds.”

“Do they really eat wood? There’s not much nutrition in it.”

“Not really. They eat the bark off young shoots. You remember the branch that one was carrying? That’s winter food. They jam them in the mud and whenever they get hungry, they just pop out of the lodge and haul a few back. During the winter they won’t ever come out from under the ice. They’re less wasteful about their garbage than we are, too. All the leavings from their meals go into the dam.” He interwove his fingers with hers as they strolled down to the dam. It was huge—perhaps seventy feet long and five feet across the top.

“That dam has probably been here a hundred years or so. It’s been this big ever since I can remember. When they start a dam, they usually pick a wide place and fell some large trees in a horseshoe pattern, then fill it in with branches. And if the dam is ever breached, they all work on it, even the littlest kits.” He bent and picked up a branch from which the bark had been precisely sheared. “See the marks from their incisors? Their teeth never stop growing. They have to keep them worn down by constant gnawing, or the teeth will actually grow clear around in a big curve and into the skull. In the extreme, it could eventually kill the animal.”

“How long do they live, then?”

“I think somewhere around fifteen years. I’ve been watching that old man for quite a while. He was there before I went to Ottawa.”

“He’s magnificent. I’ve never seen anything like this before. You know, I’ve practically never been out of the city in my whole life.”

“I can’t imagine that,” he responded.

“Really, I’ve learned so much today. It’s been worth a couple weeks in school.” She smiled up at him, warm inside. They strolled up the edge of the pond, and he pointed out the tracks of various creatures that lived around the pond—the general population of deer, raccoon, coyote, bear, elk—and one large track that Shane merely pointed to.

“You should be able to tell me what that is.”

“Well, from the little points on that center pad it looks like a cat, but it’s so big.”

“Cougar. You wait until you hear one scream at night. It gives even me goose bumps. But I think we’d better go now. I want us to have time to enjoy lunch without hurrying. And I have a special place to show you.” He helped her to the saddle, then set his foot in the stirrup and lifted himself easily to Midnight’s back. They started down the steep trail, and she watched him as he rode. All wide shoulders and slim waist, he moved easily with the big horse, cushioning the occasional jostling with his knees.