Daisies In The Wind (30 page)

“What did you do?”

“I let her go. I was relieved, if you want
the truth. It hit me hard, how wrong I was about her, the weakness
of my own judgment. It shook me badly. That she could run off and
leave her child like that and never even write to ask how he was—”
He broke off, as if aware of the heavy bitterness in his voice.
When he spoke again, his tone was clearer, calmer, but just as
solemn. “She died three months later—caught in the cross fire in
some saloon fight in ‘Frisco. She was with another gambler by then,
I don’t even remember his name. Larson, maybe. Earl Larson. Not
that it matters worth a damn.”

Rebeccah sat beside him in stunned silence as
the horses restively pawed the ground and a frigid gust of wind
sent the ends of her hair flying. Shyly her hand stole out to clasp
Wolf’s, still taut on the reins.

“I’m sorry.”

The words sounded hopelessly inadequate, and
she immediately cringed at having uttered them, but to her surprise
Wolf suddenly turned and swept her into his arms.

“I’ve never told a soul that story except for
Caitlin. We left Texas and moved here, and as far as anyone else
knows, Billy’s mother died of cholera in her own bed. My son will
never know that his mother abandoned him. He keeps a picture of her
by his bed—but I’ll be damned if I’ll keep one on the mantel and
look at it every day.”

Fury suffused him again, but as he stared
into Rebeccah’s wide, worried eyes, the tension evaporated from his
body and the anger died out of his face.

“I’m not sure why I told you all this.”

“Perhaps so I’d have sense enough to stop
bringing up her name,” she muttered ruefully.

At this he laughed. His eyes softened, and
his spirit suddenly seemed to grow lighter. She had that effect on
him. “That’d be a pleasant change, Rebeccah,” he teased.

“When I think how many times I’ve thrown her
in your face!”

“Maybe you can make it up to me,” he
suggested with a hint of a smile, watching her eyes widen and glow
in the moonlight.

“Do you have any suggestions how I might do
that, Sheriff Bodine?” she questioned softly, amazed at her own
boldness.

His deepening grin was her reward. “Matter of
fact I do.”

But as he pulled her up against him on the
cold seat of the wagon and Rebeccah felt her limbs go soft as
candle wax and her heart flutter like a mad, wild bird, there came
the quick clatter of hooves and rustling of brush on the road
behind them.

Whoever was coming was riding fast up the
trail. In an instant Wolf had thrust her from him and drawn his
gun.

Twisting on the seat, Rebeccah peered through
the darkness and saw Chance Navarro riding over the gray-shadowed
ridge directly toward them. She recognized his wiry build and
jauntily set derby, illuminated in starlight as his bay bore down
on them.

“Whoa,” Chance called, and reined in smartly
beside the buckboard.

It sounded to Rebeccah as if Wolf was
grinding his teeth.

“What a lucky chance running into you here,
Rebeccah. I was just on my way to your place to see if something
was wrong.”

“Wrong? Why would you think ... oh!”

Her hands flew to her throat. “I was supposed
to meet you for supper at the hotel tonight! Oh, Chance, I clean
forgot. I’m so sorry. Caitlin Bodine took ill, and I was helping
out at the Double B. Everything else completely slipped my
mind.”

Chance was no longer looking at her. He and
Wolf were glaring at each other, sizing each other up like two
hound dogs ready to do battle over a slab of raw meat.

“I’m real sorry to hear about Mrs. Bodine,”
Chance said, turning back to Rebeccah at last.

No, you’re not. You couldn’t care less
about Caitlin
, she realized with a flash of insight.
You
only care about being cheated out of time with me
. She had
been meeting Chance in town for supper once a week since the
schoolhouse dance and had even cooked Sunday dinner for him once
out at the cabin. And then there had been their picnic. They’d
brought a basket of food down to the stream, and he’d played the
mouth harp and later carved a rose from a block of wood and given
it to her.

He was good company—lighthearted, attentive,
and charming. But he didn’t care much about most people, she’d
learned. There was a coldness beneath his lively attitude, a
curious purposefulness that led him to mock those people and events
that didn’t fit in with whatever amusement or game he had in store
for himself. He cared about gambling—and winning—and about pursuing
her, Rebeccah knew. She also knew that for a man like Chance
Navarro the chase was everything. If she allowed herself to be
easily caught in that web of charm, he’d quickly lose interest.

But much as she enjoyed his lighthearted
company and his gallant compliments, Rebeccah was in no danger of
losing her heart to Chance Navarro. Even on the picnic, when Chance
had surprised her by dancing wildly with her up and down the stream
bank and lavishly praising her chicken sandwiches and strawberry
tarts, she had rebuffed his attempts to kiss her, feeling complete
disinterest.

There was only one man whose kisses she
sought. Considering the torment she’d suffered at the hands of
Neely Stoner, she’d never expected to experience anything close to
soaring physical desire, but when Wolf kissed her, her entire body
burst alive.

With Wolf everything was different from what
she would normally expect.

Even now. His response to Chance’s arrival
and the discovery that her original plans for the evening had
included supper with another man prompted him immediately to climb
out of the wagon and begin untying his horse.

“I reckon Navarro will be glad to see you the
rest of the way home. I’ve got to get back.”

“My pleasure,” Chance agreed, and winked at
Rebeccah.

Wolf saw the wink, and an iron hardness
settled over his face as he swung into the saddle.

Rebeccah bit her lip in frustration. She
wanted to cry,
I want you to take me home! Chance Navarro means
nothing to me—but you do. You mean everything.

But of course she couldn’t say anything so
foolish. Chance was watching her, watching and listening. And
besides, she and Wolf had already spent a long time talking—she
knew he had to get back to Billy and Caitlin.

“I hope Caitlin is better tomorrow,” she said
instead, feeling a curious hollowness inside.

His only reply was a curt nod. Then, without
another word to either her or Chance Navarro, Wolf headed Dusty at
a gallop back the way they had come.

“You’ve had a mighty long day, Rebeccah. Come
on, I’ve got a flask of brandy in my saddlebag. A shot of that will
soothe your nerves. And warm you up. It’s damned cold out here, and
I can see you’re shivering.”

She picked up the reins and glanced at him
numbly. He gave her an encouraging smile. “Let old Chance take care
of you,” he urged, moving his bay close alongside the buckboard.
“When it comes to building up a good fire, there’s no one better
than old Chance.” He gave a funny kind of laugh, as if amused at
some secret joke he shared with only himself. When she gazed at him
uncomprehendingly, he cocked his slender head to one side. “Come
on, Rebeccah, let’s get back to the cabin. Trust me, honey. I know
exactly how to get you warm.”

I’ll wager you do
, Rebeccah thought
wearily, not answering as she started the team across the uneven
ground, past the copse of alders sloping down toward the stream.
But she wasn’t interested in Chance Navarro or his flirtations—nor
in getting warm or even in eventually going to sleep. Her thoughts
were centered on Wolf Bodine, riding back alone toward the Double B
Ranch with Caitlin in the grips of a deadly fever and Billy
sleeping, exhausted, on the parlor couch.

Rebeccah peeled potatoes in silence, working
numbly alongside of the other women filling the Bodine kitchen.
Only two days ago Caitlin Bodine had yearned to hear “Oh,
Susannah,” had begged Rebeccah not to hurt Wolf, and had smiled
through her pain. Now she lay in the cold, hard ground—like Bear,
Rebeccah thought miserably—never to be seen or smiled at or sung to
again.

“She’ll be sorely missed,” Myrtle Lee
Anderson sniffed into her handkerchief as Emily Brady heaped sliced
beef on a platter and young Mary Adams shelled peas for the
Bodines’ dinner.

“She will be, that’s for sure.” Emily sighed
quietly, fighting a new flood of tears.

In the parlor Lorelie Simpson was serving
steaming cups of coffee to Wolf and Gulley Pritchard. Nel Westerly
set out a plate of cookies alongside slices of her famous chocolate
cake. The whole town had attended the funeral this morning, and
they were now rallying around the sheriff and his son, consoling
them in their grief, as the leaden rain fell from the sky and
everyone tried not to think about how strange the house felt
without Caitlin’s brisk, cheery presence.

Joey Brady popped suddenly into the kitchen.
“Billy’s crying in the barn and he won’t come out. He won’t even
talk to me.”

Rebeccah and Emily Brady exchanged glances.
“I’ll go to him,” Rebeccah said in a low tone, and hastily threw on
her cloak.

As she hurried across the sodden yard with
raindrops pelting her face and soaking into the wool of her cloak,
she wondered what she would say to him. How could one begin to heal
the pain of such a fresh, raw, and devastating wound? Somehow she
must try.

Inside the barn it was quiet, except for the
soothing sounds of the horses munching their oats and whickering
softly at her arrival.

“Billy?”

There was no answer.

Rebeccah walked past the first few stalls,
letting her eyes adjust to the shadowy dimness. “Billy—Sam—are you
here?”

Then she heard the dog’s low whine and
something else—a child’s muffled sobs. She found them huddled in
the farthest stall among piles of clean, sweet-smelling hay.

Sam’s tail thumped the floor as Rebeccah
paused in the entrance to the stall. Billy didn’t look up.

“It’s all right,” she said softly. “It’s good
to cry.”

As if released by her words, the sobs wracked
out of him then, convulsing his narrow shoulders and hunched back.
The tears flowed without restraint. “I’ll ... never see her again
...” He gasped once and buried his face in Sam’s neck. Little
hiccupping coughs came in between the sobs. “I don’t want her to be
dead! I want her to be back with us just like always!”

“Yes, yes, Billy. Of course you do. So do I.
She was my best friend in Powder Creek—the only woman friend I’ve
ever known. I’ll miss her terribly, and so will you and so will
your pa. But she’ll always live in our hearts. Even death can’t
take a person we love out of our hearts.”

“It c-can’t?”

He looked up at last, the gray eyes swimming
with tears. His face was blotchy and red, and his nose was running.
Rebeccah knelt beside him as she handed him the handkerchief from
her pocket. “No, of course it can’t. Why, my father is still in my
heart every single day. I think about the way he used to brush his
horse so carefully and sing to him sometimes ... and the way he’d
listen to me with both eyes wide whenever I told him a joke or
showed him a card trick. And the way he used to admire the
sunset—he wore this expression of pure awe sometimes when he looked
out over a canyon at the setting sun. Oh, I remember everything ...
and those memories keep him close to me.” She settled down in the
straw beside him and ventured a light hand on his arm. “Caitlin can
stay close to us too. We can talk about her and think about her and
remember her as much as we want. Every time I bake her strawberry
pie—the one she taught me how to fix so that the crust was just
right—I’ll remember her and smile. And every time you look at her
sewing box under the tea table, or the chair where she used to sit
and test you at your spelling, you’ll remember her. And you’ll
smile, too, Billy. You’ll feel all of your love for her and her
love for you. Caitlin will never really go away.”

He had grown calmer while she talked. With
one last sniffle he leaned his head against Rebeccah’s shoulder.
They sat like that for a while in the sweet-smelling dusk of the
barn, with the rain pattering on the roof and Sam stretched out
beside them, his shaggy head resting on Billy’s knee.

That night Rebeccah dreamed of Bear and of
Caitlin, square dancing together in what might have been the
schoolhouse, but there were no fiddlers, no music or bright
frontier garb or any other dancers at all, only the two of them,
dim, shadowy forms with bright light illuminating their solemn
faces as they did a
do-si-do
down a wide tunnel of
blackness.

A week passed. Life went on in Powder Creek.
But Rebeccah still found it difficult to believe Caitlin was really
gone.
Don’t hurt him
, Caitlin had pleaded, almost her last
words spoken on earth. Now that Rebeccah knew what had transpired
with Clarissa, Caitlin’s concern made a bit more sense to her, but
she could still scarcely believe what else Caitlin had said: that
Wolf cared for her more than for Lorelie Simpson or Nel
Westerly—that she, Rebeccah Rawlings, had the power to hurt him—or
possibly, she reasoned with a sense of wonder, to heal.

Rebeccah hadn’t seen Wolf since the day of
the funeral, though she had brought over a kettle of stew and a
batch of cornbread muffins one night, and on another a mess of
fried chicken and boiled carrots. Both times women from the
surrounding area had been at the house to accept the offerings, for
it seemed the town was banding together to help Wolf in his time of
grief. Mary Adams helped with the wash and the household chores,
and the women of the community took turns keeping an eye on Billy
and making sure the Double B larder was stocked with food, not to
mention providing a good quantity of freshly prepared meals.