“You’re very welcome,” Caroline said, smiling at
the old chief. She would have said more had not a very hard look from Matt warned her to silence.
“I will take her home with me now,” he said to Habocum, who nodded.
“You will need food for your journey, and blankets. The sky promises snow.”
In short order the promised supplies were handed over and tied to the horse’s saddle, except for one varicolored blanket that Matt wrapped around Caroline. She gave last-minute instructions about the continuing treatment that Pinochet would need to Habocum, who nodded gravely, and then, almost before she had finished speaking, Matt was lifting her into the saddle and swinging up behind her. He replied with no more than a nod to Habocum’s hand lifted in farewell as he turned the horse about and headed out of the camp. As they passed the last barking dog, squaws were stripping huts. Possessions were being bundled up and fires smothered. It was obvious that the little band was breaking camp and preparing to move on.
“You were rude,” Caroline said accusingly when they were under the protection of the trees and safely out of eyeshot and earshot.
“Rude?” Matt sounded as if words threatened to fail him. “That was Habocum, my poppet. Not half a dozen years ago he led a war party that decimated a whole settlement not far from Wethersfield. He was subdued, and his tribe largely wiped out, but he was never captured and has been on the run ever since. He’s known for being bloodthirsty, and he hates the white man. I consider us fortunate to have escaped
with whole skins, and saw no reason to linger to give him time to reconsider the matter.”
“You came alone?” Matt’s bravery in doing so was just beginning to occur to her.
“I did not want to waste time trying to recruit volunteers from the town, and James and Dan were away. Rob and Thorn, being somewhat hotheaded, are not always assets on an expedition of this nature, and in any case they were needed at home. And in my dealings with Indians I have found that they respond more positively to a single, reasonable man than to an armed band threatening bloodshed. Besides, if you were to be recovered at all, it needed to be done swiftly. I feared what I might find if I tarried overlong.”
The notion that Matt had been afraid for her made Caroline smile a little, and she rested her head against the plush fur covering his chest. He was dressed for the cold in ankle-length coat and knee-high boots, wide-brimmed hat and leather gloves. There were lines of fatigue around his eyes, and his jaw was bristly with blue-black stubble as he had not shaved in a day and a half. Even so, he looked very handsome, and so masculine that Caroline felt a tingling of her nerve endings as she looked up at him. Though since she had known him he rarely rode horseback, he seemed at ease in the saddle, and the horse that spent most of its days cavorting in a back field was docile under his hands. Whatever Matt did, he did it well, it seemed. Although, as she thought about that, she made a mental exception of his singing, and smiled again.
Riding before him in the saddle, his arm around her waist to keep her in place, Caroline was tired but content.
Even through the blanket that swaddled her, she could feel the muscular strength of that arm and the spread thighs that cradled her buttocks. Settling herself closer against him, she faced the fact squarely: she loved the maddening, impossible man. She meant to have him and no other, whatever it took.
“I was glad to see you,” she confessed.
“I was glad to see you too, especially alive and in one piece,” he answered dryly.
“I was never really in danger, I think.”
“Would that I had known that. I’ve probably lost a good dozen years off my life in the last day and a half.”
“What would you have done, had they not let me go?” Pictures of a bloody battle made her shiver. But magnificent though Matt was, he would surely have lost. He was a farmer, not a soldier, and one man alone. What kind of battle could he have waged against a whole tribe?
“I would have bartered for you.” Out of the corner of her eye she saw his mouth ease into a faint grin. “Horse, coat, musket, whatever it took. I even brought some skins along. And a side of bacon, and two jugs of rum. I was fairly confident I could get them to agree to the trade, if you were still unharmed when I caught up with you.” He paused, and a shade of tension entered his voice. “You are unharmed, aren’t you? They didn’t touch you?”
Caroline shook her head. “I’m tired, and nigh perishing of hunger, but that’s all. Were you truly frightened when you discovered I was missing, Matt?”
“A little.”
She poked him with her elbow in retaliation. He grunted, but she thought he must hardly have felt it through the thick coat.
“When I found you gone, and discovered the basket and gun fallen beside the path—’twas a moment the likes of which I hope never to live through again.”
The gruff admission made Caroline’s heart stop. There was so much she wanted to say—and more that she wanted to hear him say—but she was tired to her bones, and the motion of the horse was lulling her almost to sleep. The conversation she had in mind was best postponed until she was fully in possession of her senses.
“Can we stop to eat, do you think?” was all she said.
“Did they not feed you?” Without stopping the horse, he turned in the saddle, rummaging in the bag tied on behind, and came up with an apple, which he handed to her.
“I’d prefer to get as far as we can before the weather hits, if this will keep you from starvation until we stop.”
With a wordless grumble and a pained look at the apple, Caroline accepted it and bit into the red skin. The fruit, tart and juicy, tasted like nectar. She munched it, polishing it off until naught but the skinniest piece of core remained, then tossed it overboard while she licked her sticky fingers. When she glanced back at Matt, expecting to find him watching her amused, she discovered a frown instead, as he looked at the sky through the bare patches in the canopy above them.
“Is something wrong?” Caroline asked, worried by his expression.
“If I’m not mistaken, we’ll have snow before nightfall.”
“But we won’t be home by then!”
“No.”
“What will we do?”
Matt shook his head. “If it’s bad, take shelter until it’s over. If not, ride through it. I’ve done it before.”
“You have?”
“Many times when we first came here, before the settlement was well established and the house built. You’d be amazed to know what a wilderness this part of the country used to be.”
As it seemed a wilderness to her still, Caroline found the notion that it had once been wilder yet appalling. But now that the sharpest pangs of her hunger had been appeased, sleepiness was taking its toll. Huddling more closely into the blanket, she allowed her head to drop back against him, smiling at him when he glanced down at her.
“You look stove-in, poppet,” he said, the curve of his mouth almost tender. “Why don’t you give up and go to sleep? You can trust me to get you home safe.”
“I know. But I’m not all that tired.”
“No?”
“No.”
He said nothing more, just settled his arm more firmly about her waist as he guided the horse toward home, using the river as his map. Lulled by the gentle rocking, the warmth of his body behind her, and the security of knowing herself safe in his hands, Caroline
allowed her eyes to close. Just for a minute, to rest her heavy lids.
Moments later she was asleep. And while she was asleep the threatened snow began to fall.
37
T
he cessation of motion woke her, she thought. Blinking, eyes widening as she saw nothing for a moment but a swirl of white, Caroline felt momentarily disoriented. She was aware that she was on horseback, with Matt behind her shouting something in her ear, and that the blinding, shifting curtain before her eyes was wind-driven snow.
“What?” she asked, but the wind blew the question away unheard. She had no need to worry, however. Matt was already repeating himself, his arm tightening about her ribcage and his bristly jaw grazing her ear as he roared.
“We’re not going to make it. We’ll have to take shelter.”
“Where?” But this, too, swirled away with the snow. He was already dismounting, and Caroline acutely felt the loss of his heat and strength behind her. The wind buffeted her, driving icy needles of snow into the skin of her face as, by his going, he dislodged the fold of blanket he must have pulled up to protect her as she slept. She shivered, clinging to the saddle horn, fighting to catch her breath in the fierce cold. How had such a temperature change come on so fast?
Matt, on the ground beside the horse, shouted something
that she couldn’t understand. But when he held up his arms to her, she slid into them, allowing him to lift her down and set her on her feet beside him. The thick carpet of leaves that lay over the forest floor was covered now with perhaps half an inch of glistening snow. More snow, falling from a sky the color of pewter, was pushed by the whistling wind into white crusts that held fast to tree trunks and rocks. Matt pointed to what looked like a solid cliff face, and though she still couldn’t understand what he was saying, she allowed him to lead her toward it. The horse, its reins trailing, was left behind.
With the snow clouding her vision she did not see the hollow in the rock until he pulled her into it. Not a true cave, no more than ten feet deep and perhaps eight feet wide, it looked as if a giant had taken a bite out of the cliff and then set it back down. Matt stepped inside it and pulled her in after him. The sudden discontinuance of stinging snow hitting her face and wind whistling in her ears was a blessed relief.
“We’ll have to stay here until it stops.” Matt was no longer shouting as he tested the depth of the leaves on the ground. Caroline, shivering in her blanket, turned to look at him. Snow glistened on the brim of his hat and beaded the dark fur of his coat. His eyes were very blue in the shadowy darkness of the cave.
“We’ll freeze,” she protested, but he shook his head.
“You stay in here out of the wind, and I’ll get what we need,” he told her and then strode back out into the curtain of whirling white. Clearly he meant to gather what they needed to set up camp, and he could use her help. Not that he would appreciate it, of
course, but at the moment she doubted that he would take the time necessary to hog-tie her, which was what he would have to do to prevent her from doing her share. Setting her jaw in anticipation of his reaction to her disobedience, she nevertheless pulled the blanket closer and followed him out into the storm.
Though the horse, with Matt beside it, was less than a dozen feet away, it was hard to make out more than a dark blur. Matt, she thought, was not even aware of her approach until she reached his side. The look he gave her was narrow-eyed, but he did not waste his breath with words that the wind would prevent her hearing. Instead he quickly filled her arms with bundles stripped from the horse and turned her back to deposit them in the cave. He came behind her, bearing jugs and bags and the horse’s tack. The bulk of this he dropped in an untidy pile just inside the entrance, though the jugs received more careful treatment. He straightened, his frost-rimmed brows meeting over the bridge of his nose as he scowled at Caroline.
“I told you to stay in here out of the wind, and I meant it,” he said sharply. “I’m dressed for the weather, where you’re not, and I’ll get what’s needed done a lot quicker if I’m not worrying about you. If you want something to do, go through our supplies to see what we’ve got. In an hour or less, we’ll be stuck here for the duration, so I’ve no time to argue.”
With that he turned and went back out into the crystalline whirlwind. Caroline watched him go, then turned back to do as he’d told her. His words made sense. She was scantily dressed for such numbing weather, and despite its warmth the blanket was in
danger of growing damp from melting snow. Sliding it from her shoulders, Caroline shook it out, then rewrapped herself. She began inventorying and arranging their supplies.
An hour later the opening to the hollow was blocked with branches of scrub pine, dragged there by Matt and set in place against the outcropping of rock that formed their roof. A goodly supply of fallen branches for firewood was piled just inside this makeshift wall. An opening perhaps two feet wide had been left on its right side for the fire that would provide them with necessary warmth.
Matt knelt there, carefully arranging limbs, scrub, and tinder. When he opened his musket to sprinkle gunpowder over the whole, then disassembled the snaphance to procure a makeshift but functional flint and steel, Caroline could bear it no longer. He was deathly afraid of fire, as she well knew, though of course he was happily ignorant of her knowledge. She had been watching him covertly for some time, noting the increasing grimness of the set of his jaw, the determination in his eyes. But she thought that his fingers as he got ready to click the cumbersome fire starter together were not quite steady, and she could not even for the sake of his male pride keep her tongue between her teeth.
“I’ll do that, if you please,” she said briskly, moving toward him. Her words emerged as white puffs of smoke in the frosty air. Even in their newly cozy shelter, the heat of the fire was sorely needed.
Matt looked up at her, his eyes narrowed. But she
noted that he stopped what he was doing, grateful, she suspected, for the slightest excuse for delay.
“Do what?”
“Start the fire. You may go out and see to the poor horse, if you want something to do.”
“I loosed it. He’ll fare better than we would, and probably even find his way home. But why should you wish to start the fire?”
“Starting fires is something at which I have a particular skill. ’Tis not fair that you’re the only one who gets to show competence.” She held out her hands for the flint and steel as she spoke.
But instead of meekly passing them to her, as Caroline thought he might now that he had a graceful way out of an abhorrent task, he stood up, stretching to his full height, which with his hat on was just an inch or so short of the roof, and eyed her narrowly.