Dorothy Garlock - [Wabash River] (10 page)

He cared nothing for her at all.

The thought echoed in her mind, causing her heart to sink like a rock in her chest and nerves to knot in her stomach. She thought she would be sick. In spite of her roiling emotions, when she spoke, her voice was quiet and as solid as steel.

“You
have
changed, Rain. Back when I knew you you wouldn’t have even thought of such a thing.” She looked at him with disappointment and pain in her eyes and in every line of her face.

“What do you think I meant?” he asked in a soft, puzzled tone while his steady gaze held hers.

“Maybe you’d better tell me.”

“I was wondering if you were jealous of Liberty because she has a home of her own, a husband and children. I’m sure you could have all of that if you wanted it.”

“You must not have a very good opinion of me if you think I begrudge my sister her family.” Pride kept Amy’s voice steady, although she never felt more like crying in her life.

“I don’t know what to think of you . . . now.”

“You didn’t know what to think of me back then.”

“We’re not kids anymore. We should be civil to each other . . . for Libby’s sake.”

“I’ll try to stay out of your way.” With her smooth brows raised, Amy picked up the bucket, moved around him and started for the door. “Blow out the lantern when you leave,” she said over her shoulder.

“Amy! What the hell’s the matter with you?”

“Nothing, Rain. I’m the same as I’ve always been.”

Rain knew her attitude had something to do with him. He had seen her teasing Daniel and Mercy, laughing with them. But when she realized he was nearby, she closed up. Now he groped for words and could find none. He was a man who had spent much time alone, given to expressing himself in action, and the few words he used were usually associated with action. He wanted to grab her and tell her not to walk away from him.

“If you don’t want to come west with us, say so. Don’t put a damper on it for Farr and Libby,” he called after her, knowing instinctively that he was saying the wrong thing.

Amy didn’t answer. She kicked the barn door open, went through it, then kicked it shut with such force it failed to catch and bounced back open. She heard the low murmur of curses that came from inside the barn and felt a brief flash of satisfaction.

Five

Rain watched Amy leave the barn. He was surprised to find himself so angry he wanted to pound the stall posts with his fists. He wondered why the hell he was so riled up. No answer came readily to his mind as he tossed hay into each of the stalls. He didn’t know why Amy’s attitude toward him disturbed him. He hadn’t expected her to be at Quill’s Station, and the sight of her that first night had stirred an unfamiliar emotion in him. He’d been too long without a woman, his logical mind reasoned.

He finished the chores and blew out the lantern. In the semidarkness he could still see the look of hurt on her face. He wondered if he had been too close to the truth when he asked if she were jealous of Libby. She had lived here all these years with Libby and Farr, he thought, and even as a kid she was so fond of Farr that he was the first one she ran to when something went wrong. Had she fallen in love with her sister’s husband? Was that the reason she hadn’t married again? The thought was so depressing that he wanted to saddle up and ride out. But he didn’t. He headed for the house.

*   *   *

The day passed quickly. Rain and Farr spent much of the afternoon at the store where Rain helped Farr select goods suitable for trading along the Arkansas River. They decided on hard-bottom candles with cotton wicks, salt, cider vinegar, beans, flour, and five hundred pounds of good hard soap along with bolts of cloth and seeds. Rain suggested they take whiskey, tobacco, knives, needles, beads, thread, vermilion, lead, paints, powder, guns, blankets, flints, knife handles, gun screws, wampum belts, and the like.

At the sawyer camp they looked over the heavy freight wagons Farr planned to use to carry his trade goods and his family west.

“The bottom boards are two inches thick and the sides only slightly less. They’ll need to hold a heavy load if I take tools to trade and tools to set up another sawyer camp. What do you think, Rain?”

Rain knelt down and peered at the angle iron straps that reinforced the bottom.

“I never saw a better built wagon bed. If you mount it on fifty-two-inch, iron-rimmed wheels you’ll be able to ford most streams without getting the bottom wet.”

Farr rested his hands on the back wheel of the wagon and gripped hard.

“At times I think I’m out of my mind to be uprooting my family and taking them into unsettled land. My God, Rain! If anything happened to Libby . . .”

Rain shrugged. “I’ve told you what to expect, Farr. It’s your decision.”

“It wasn’t mine alone. Libby wants to go. She’s excited about it.”

“Some women take to trail life and setting up a homestead. Some women want to stay put.”

“Most women would hate pulling out and leaving a comfortable home. Libby says home is where family is, not the other way around.”

“I hadn’t thought about it like that.”

The word
home
had never meant much to Rain. He had not had a home—a real home—of his own. At first he had lived in John Spotted Elk’s
weigius,
and then he had come to be with Farr and Juicy. After that home had been wherever he could throw down his blanket. It would be different in his high valley, he thought. The cabin he built would be his, and the woman he brought to it would be his woman—

“Don’t worry about Amy. She’ll come around.”

Farr’s voice broke into Rain’s thoughts and he turned to look at him with a puzzled frown.

“I’m not worrying about her.” Even as he said the words, he knew they were not true. Always honest with himself, he admitted that he would be disappointed as hell if Amy decided to stay at Quill’s Station.

“Her pa’s pushing her to marry Tally Perkins.”

“I can’t see her being pushed into anything. She’s not a kid now.”

“No, she’s not a kid now.” Farr turned away and they started walking toward the house. “She was devoted to Juicy and cared for him like a baby at the last.”

“I thought she’d be wed again by now. Women aren’t all that plentiful, even here.”

Farr laughed. “She could’ve had her pick of the best and the worst of the lot. Every unwed man within miles called on her the first week. Some were on the doorstone before we buried Juicy. She gave the first few a good tongue-lashing for courting her before she’d put her husband in the ground. Juicy would have had a good laugh out of that.”

“Juicy should have kept a tighter hold on her,” Rain growled.

Farr looked at him quickly. “Do the britches bother you? Folks around here are used to her. Oh, she turns some heads once in a while.” Farr chuckled. “Our Amy is quite a girl. She can do most things as good as a man.”

“I saw a woman in britches once before. She was as hard as nails and as tough as boot leather. I like a woman to have a little softness about her.”

Farr slapped Rain on the back. “Like Libby?”

Rain grinned at his friend. “Like Libby.”

*   *   *

At the end of the week Rain left Quill’s Station to go to Carrolltown to see Colby Carroll. On the way back he would stop at Louisville to get Miss Woodbury and her aunt. He made no attempt to see Amy alone until the last morning. He went to the barn just as she was finishing the milking.

“Morning, Amy.”

“Morning.”

“It’s going to be a nice day for traveling. With luck, I’ll see Colby within a week.”

“Tell him and Willa hello.”

“I’ll do that.”

“Good-bye.” She picked up the bucket and moved past him.

“Amy . . . wait.”

She turned, lifted her brows and tilted her head so she could look up at him. Hope that sprang in her heart died when she looked into his dark, fathomless eyes. Deep crinkly grooves marked the corners, put there when his eyes had squinted against the sun. There were other lines too that experience, tiredness, or harsh winter weather had made. They were hard, penetrating eyes with no softness in them for her.

He continued to look at her, and she felt herself becoming unnerved by his intense scrutiny. She racked her brain for something to say. Damn him! Why didn’t
he
say something? She straightened her back stubbornly and decided to say nothing, but her eyes seemed to be drawn to his, and he held them with a probing stare before moving from her face to her hair, then down the full length of her body.

Amy set the bucket of milk down, still keeping her eyes on his face.

His voice was softer than she expected when he finally spoke. His lips barely moved, but she heard his words distinctly.

“Do you remember the last time we said good-bye? You kissed me.”

Her face turned brick red. He was not smiling, so he was not teasing. It suddenly occurred to her that he wanted to embarrass her—that he blamed her for the silence that had been between them during the past week. She was silent for as long as it took her to fight down the angry words that sprang to her lips. The thickheaded fool! Didn’t he know her love for him was tearing her apart, that she couldn’t even look at him without wanting to cry? In spite of her thundering heartbeat, she tossed her head in a gesture of indifference and concentrated on keeping her poise.

“I was a child. Children do foolish things.”

“It didn’t seem foolish at the time.”

“Oh, well—” She shrugged and bent to pick up the bucket. His hand on her wrist stopped her.

“Amy . . . let’s do it again.” His words reached into her consciousness through the blood pounding in her ears.

She was too stunned to answer and her lips parted softly in surprise. The glitter in his eyes made her feel as though her heart might leap from her breast, and she stared at him in total panic as his arms slid around her.

Amy watched his mouth moving toward hers and instinctively splayed her fingers against his chest. His lips pressed hers gently, then took slow, deliberate possession. Her lips parted invitingly beneath his as if she had no control over them. She could feel the scrape of his whiskers on her cheek and feel the pounding of his heartbeat against her palm. His fingers caressed the nape of her neck and a wave of gladness made her pulse leap. Her hands moved beneath his arms to his back and she hugged him tightly to her.

Her surrender seemed to trigger a deeper need in him and the quality of his kiss exploded into a passionate demand that caused something warm and powerful to throb in the area below her stomach. His warmth seeped into her; she luxuriated in his strength.

Rain lifted his head a fraction until their noses were tip to tip and looked at her with glittering eyes. Then his mouth tenderly and almost reverently planted another kiss on her lips before his hands on her shoulders gently moved her away from him.

“It was better than I remembered.”

The words were spoken so softly that Amy scarcely heard them. She closed her eyes against momentary giddiness. There was a tightness across her chest and a fullness in her throat. His hands on her shoulders tightened. She had an incredible urge to throw her arms around him and beg him to take her with him. Fear that she would do something foolish and irreversible brought her back to reality. When she bent to pick up the bucket, his hands fell to his sides. She turned to leave.

“Amy . . . I’ll be back.”

She heard the familiar words and glanced at him over her shoulder. Years rolled away and he was a tall, thin youth holding tightly to the reins of a borrowed horse. Unable to speak, she nodded her head and walked quickly to the house.

*   *   *

The following weeks were filled with frenzied preparations. Farr was away from the house much of the time. He was having one of the heavy freight wagons fitted out for the family to live in and three other wagons reinforced to carry supplies, trade goods and the tools he would need to set up a sawyer camp and a blacksmith shop. Both he and Liberty vowed to take enough land for themselves so they would not be boxed in as they were at Quill’s Station.

Liberty selected the things she wanted to take with her to her new home and the things she wanted to leave with Maude and her father.

“We’ll take the spinning wheel but leave the loom. We’ll take all the feather ticks. Laid flat they’ll serve as a mattress or a cover. Of course, we’ll take the clock, the good pieces of pottery, the rocking chair, and the trunks. What are you taking, Amy?”

Liberty paused amid the clutter and looked inquiringly at her sister. For a time after Rain left, more than a month ago now, she had been more like her cheerful self, but gradually she had become quieter, spending more and more time alone.

Amy, working on a buckskin shirt that would come to her knees, glanced up, then back to her work.

“Clothes, rifle, knife, blankets.”

Liberty looked at her sister with a worried frown. Faint lines of strain had appeared lately between her brows and at the corners of her eyes and mouth. Her face often had a pensive look, with shadows of worry beneath her eyes. Her wide mouth, its lower lip fuller and softer than the upper one, was often turned down at the corners, reflecting her less-than-happy mood. Liberty was sure her sister’s depression was due to Rain’s attitude toward her. She had tried to talk to her about him, but Amy refused to discuss him.

Mercy, coming down from the loft, broke into Liberty’s thoughts.

“When will Rain and Daniel be back?”

“Not for another couple of weeks. I swear, Mercy. You’ve asked me that every day. If I didn’t know better I’d think that you miss Daniel.”

“I don’t! I don’t miss him at all! I like Mike better. He doesn’t boss me all the time. I’m glad he’s going with us to the Arkansas.”

“So am I. Farr says he’s a willing worker and learns fast. He’d good with a hammer and saw.”

“Better than Daniel?”

“No. Farr wasn’t comparing the two boys.”

Liberty glanced quickly at Amy and saw her brief, knowing grin. They both knew that for all Mercy’s complaining about Daniel, she would get riled up if anyone else criticized him. A few months back she had launched herself at Tally and kicked his shins when he shoved Daniel out of his way.