The River Nymph (21 page)

“I…I couldn’t sleep. I keep seeing that man I killed. I shot Pardee after a long, frightening ordeal. I acted instinctively,
but Flowers…” She shuddered, remembering how she’d deliberately aimed for his face to stop him.

“You did what you had to do today. Saved Currie’s life with your quick thinking—else I’d’ve had to choose whether to save
him or you from the river,” he said with a crooked grin, smoothing a long strand of hair away from her cheek.

“I could swim for myself,” she whispered. “When I saw you leap into the river, I was so afraid.” She laid her head against
his chest and felt the reassuring beat of his heart.

“I could’ve buried myself in mud instead of water. Fool way to die.”

She raised her head and touched his lips with her fingertips. “Don’t say it. You didn’t die. It was very brave if reckless,
just like you…and then, when you climbed back onto the boat, dripping wet…”

“Come,” he invited, leading her to his bed.

Although it was unmade, she could tell he had not been sleeping. A book of Shakespeare’s sonnets from her uncle’s collection
lay beside a lantern turned up high. He lowered the flame, then drew her into his arms. Delilah went eagerly, untying the
belt to her wrapper as he slid it off her shoulders, tracing soft, wet kisses along her arms and breasts. She could feel the
heat of his mouth through the sheer batiste of her night rail and wanted no barriers between their flesh.

When her hands moved to the belt of his robe, he plucked her loose gown up and over her head in one swift, graceful motion,
then shrugged out of his robe. “Do you always sleep in the altogether?” she asked breathlessly.

“Always,” he said, scooping her into his arms and laying her on the narrow bed. He sat beside her, spreading her hair across
his pillow, then lifting it with his fingers, letting it fall like silk, gleaming russet in the shadows cast by the lantern.
“The light catches your fire, Deelie,” he murmured, lowering his head so his stubbled chin brushed her sensitive breasts.

Prickles of delight shuddered through her at the faint scratchiness, but she wanted his mouth on the aching tips and guided
his head until he took one nipple between his lips, then the other. She writhed, reaching for his straining staff at her thigh,
but he moved lower, eluding her grasp, trailing kisses down to her belly and around the curves of her hips, his hands following
where his mouth led.

She expected him to kiss her legs as he’d done last time, but now he paused by the dark russet curls at the juncture of her
thighs. Delilah squirmed, uncertain whether or not she wanted this shocking intimacy. His mouth brushed across the tops of
her thighs. “No,” she whispered.

“Oh, yes,” he answered, lying on his stomach on the bed, spreading her legs, caressing her inner thighs until they fell apart
of their own volition, even though her mind said this was…was…

“This is…” Again her thoughts faded into pure sensation, her mind fuzzy and lost.

“Wicked? Forbidden?” He chuckled softly. “Oh, Deelie, you have so much to learn. Let me teach you?”

He did not give her the opportunity to reply but lowered his head once more to her soft, feminine heat and tasted of her.
When she moaned and offered herself to him, he cupped her derrière in his hands and raised her lower body up to feast, laving
gently with his tongue, swirling, tugging, ever so softly, gently caressing.

Delilah gasped at this scalding new pleasure. Howstrangely, wonderfully, wickedly delicious it felt. Her fingers sank into
his straight dark gold hair, urging him on until she could feel the beginnings of what she had come to know meant culmination.
Her breath gathered to emit a cry of keening ecstasy when the waves crested.

But before she could do so, he slid up her body, plunging his hard staff deep inside her while his mouth found hers in a fierce,
possessive kiss, smothering her cries lest they be heard through the thin walls of the cabins.

She could taste herself on his lips, although there was no room for thought of it now. He stroked hard and fast, drawing from
her his own desperate pleasure, mindless as she, feeling her clenching heat surround him. Then he, too, surrendered to the
bliss.

They lay entwined, sweat-soaked and panting for breath in the afterglow. The soft lantern gave its golden benediction.

“It’s the Liver Eater’s camp! Ole man Johnson hisself,” one of the roosters called out as they approached the wood stop the
following afternoon.

“I ain’t a goin’ into his place. Seen it once’t ’n that were ’nough fer me,” a second said, shivering. “ ’Sides, he’s got
some fancy-ass gunman workin’ fer ’im now, has ole Jeremiah. Word is that killer’d jist as soon shoot a feller as spit.”

Delilah listened to them and turned to Horace. “Who is this woodhawk, Jeremiah Johnson? Have you heard of him?”

Horace shrugged. “Only vague rumors, probably greatly exaggerated, as are most tales on the Missouri. His name is either Jeremiah
or John. Nobody knows which. It’s said he’s killed scores of Crow Indians in revenge for the death of his Flathead wife.”

“And he ate their livers?” she asked, horrified.

“As I said, probably a tall tale,” Horace replied dismissively.
Just like Sky’s tale of Lightning Hand’s scalp poles
. But she knew her friend would never invent such a terrible story about her beloved brother. Delilah said nothing more to
heruncle, only nodded, watching the shoreline as they drew closer.

As the boat stopped, Delilah could see a tall, gaunt man of indeterminate years with a matted beard and thinning, gray, shoulder-length
hair standing at the top of the steep embankment. He wore only a filthy red flannel nightshirt that stopped barely at midthigh,
revealing long, sinuous, hairy legs. “So that’s the fabled Mr. Johnson. He looks dirty and disheveled, but I’d scarcely say
all that dangerous.”

“You are most probably correct, my dear. Nevertheless, I’m going to accompany Clint while he negotiates for wood. You note
the unsavory fellow in Mr. Johnson’s shadow? His name is, rather bizarrely, Mr. X. Biedler, a hired killer, apparently of
some repute. Because of Mr. Johnson’s, er, exploits among the various Indian tribes in the territory, Biedler’s gun provides
protection for Johnson’s wood business.” Horace held his telescopic rifle at his side.

She watched her uncle and Clint stride down the gangplank. The old man at the top of the hill stood like a malevolent sentinel,
arms crossed, bare feet firmly planted on the grassy slope, as if defying them to enter his fiefdom. Some instinct made her
suddenly uneasy. “Todd, have the crew staying aboard arm themselves and be prepared for trouble,” she said to Spearman.

“Mr. Daniels already done tole us,” Todd replied. “We hear any ruckus, we come on the double.”

Delilah watched intently as Johnson called out to Clint, “Wall, if’n it ain’t the great Pawnee Killer, Lightnin’ Hand, come
back from th’ dead. How be ye, white Injun?”

She could not discern Clint’s reply but sensed the tension in his body. He wore buckskin breeches and moccasins as usual,
but this morning she’d been surprised to see him without a shirt. Instead he had a sleeveless leather vest laced across his
broad chest, making him appear all the more savage. After their breathlessly wondrous interlude last night, his apparel distressed
her. She was no closer to understanding him thanshe had been the day she met him. It seemed with each passing mile upriver,
he became more Indian, less white. Was this the gentle, teasing man who quoted Shakespeare and made such delicious love to
her? Or was he once more Lightning Hand, the white Sioux?

Suddenly, Delilah felt some perverse compulsion to know what was going to happen between the two antagonists. She felt the
weight of the Derringer in her pocket, reassuring her as she waited for them to disappear over the embankment into the Liver
Eater’s camp. Then she walked down the gangplank. But instead of following them directly to the camp, she walked along the
bank a couple of dozen yards upstream, moving around to the side, where she could watch what went on without giving away her
presence.

She had slipped from Clint’s cabin near dawn, undiscovered. Other than one last, lingering kiss, he had said nothing, promised
nothing to her. But that had been their agreement. She would not settle for this enigma, a man standing between two worlds,
yet invading her bed, her thoughts, her very soul. That realization frightened her, and Delilah Raymond resented being frightened.
She refused to consider that she had been the one to go to him last night.

Why had he dressed like a savage after such a tender interlude? For this man whom he’d known he would meet today? What was
their past history? The awful woodhawk obviously knew Clint from his time with the Ehanktonwon. She crept up the bank and
sneaked nearer to the sounds of their voices, braving the prickling thorns of wild blackberry bushes and other low-growing,
scratchy prairie grasses, still dry from the last brutal days of winter on the high plains.

When she saw the camp, her breath caught in her throat. She suppressed a scream of revulsion, unable to tear her eyes away
from the horror. Delilah swallowed hard, trying not to cry out.

Chapter Seventeen

Along
corridor stretched from the lip of the hill downward like a throne-room entry hall. Human skulls hung from the poles that
lined the sides of the dirt walkway leading to Jeremiah Johnson’s large, crude log house. Some of the bones gleamed, bleached
white by the sun, the jaws clamped in a rictus of what looked like obscene laughter. Others were fresher, with bits of rotting
flesh and hair still marring what would become a death-white patina. There must have been—her mind shut down, unable to count
the number. They swayed in the wind from the river, suspended on long ropes.

It was a savage scene, straight from the fiendish imagination of an utter madman. Delilah remained frozen behind the bushes,
unable to turn away. Her uncle stood at the bottom of the slope, observing from a distance, his rifle at the ready. They both
watched as Clint walked up the hill through the hideous gauntlet, seemingly oblivious to the demonic horrors surrounding him.
She could not envision what a civilized man such as Horace Mathers must think of this barbarity.

She wondered what Clint thought. He knew this insane old murderer, had dealt with him before. Now he approached Johnson, who
had retreated to the front of his lair as if to make his visitor walk past his grisly trophies. She could see the crazed light
in his rheumy eyes, even smell the incredible stench emanating from his body—or the death heads rotting all around him; it
was difficult to tell which. She swallowed down her gorge as Johnson spoke.

“Good ta see ye, Lightnin’. Heerd ye’d gone back ta bein’ white agin, but it don’t much look like it.” He surveyedClint’s
buckskins and long hair and then spit a gob of black tobacco near Clint’s moccasins.

Daniels did not move. “I’ve come to buy wood, Johnson. What’s your price for a load?” he asked in a flat voice.

“See ye got ye a fancy stern-wheeler. Come up in th—world, ain—tcha? Think thet makes ye better—n a ole woodhawk?”

“I’m not thinking about anything but loading up and pulling out, Johnson. How much?”

“Now, thet ain’t sociable.” He took a menacing step forward, hands at his sides as if ready to throw a punch. “Ye and me,
we be cut from th—same cloth—don’t ye be fergittin’ it. We done th’ same. Tuk vengeance fer our wimmen. Ain’t nothin’ wrong
in thet.”

Delilah had watched Clint’s back stiffen during the exchange, his anger palpable. Now he clenched his fists and spoke through
gritted teeth. She noted that her uncle had raised his rifle from his side and cradled it in his arms.

“We’re nothing alike, Johnson. I’m no cannibal.”

Johnson laughed, a high-pitched, screeching sound that sent a new shiver down Delilah’s spine.

“Oh, I et me some Crow livers, right ’nough. Tuk their heads ’n made me some real purty de-cor-ations.” He drew out the last
word, relishing it as he looked up and down his walk of infamy. “Ye tuk Pawnee scalps. Filled a couply mighty tall lodge poles,
way I heerd it. Don’t rightly see whut’s so differ’nt jest ’cause ye didn’t taste ’o their innards. We’re th’ same unner th’
skin.”

The blow landed so swiftly, Delilah scarcely saw Clint move. In an instant, the rangy old giant was flying onto his back in
the dirt. The small, swarthy gunman materialized from the side of the cabin, his Remington .45 halfway out of his holster.
Horace raised his rifle, but before he could aim it, Clint wheeled around and drew his revolver. The little killer’s black
hair bounced in oily ringlets as he shook his head, letting his weapon drop back into its holster.

“No, I got no fight with you, Yankton. You come to buy wood, we’ll sell it. Ole Liver Eater, he’s a mite tetched.” Biedler’s
forced grin revealed tobacco-stained teeth as he jabbed the fingers of one raised hand against his head to indicate Johnson
was crazy.

Clint’s hand remained steady, his Army Colt aimed at the gunman’s heart. Delilah could see his finger whitening on the trigger.
She almost cried out, afraid he would shoot the man in cold blood, so great was his rage. Then, ever so slowly, he exhaled
and slid the gun back into his holster. Neither he nor the hired gun seemed aware of Horace standing in the distance. Clint
deliberately turned his back on Biedler and walked away, daring the killer to try again.

After a dozen paces, he called out, “I’ll send my men for the wood. The goin’ rate, not a penny more.” He pulled a sack of
coins from his belt and tossed it over his shoulder.

Delilah watched Clint’s face. His eyes looked cold, dead as the Liver Eater’s hideous trophies that surrounded him. He stared
straight ahead toward the river and never looked back. He passed Horace without acknowledgment, half walking, half sliding
down the bank.
Fleeing memories so terrible he cannot
bear them.

Johnson got to his feet as Biedler picked up the money from where Clint had thrown it. The giant shook his grizzled head and
rubbed his jaw. She half expected him to yell out after Clint, but he held his peace. The two men conferred for a moment.
Then Biedler disappeared inside the cabin. Johnson shambled toward the huge woodpile in the clearing on the other side of
his cabin to wait for the roosters.

Delilah worried that Clint might notice she had left the boat, but when she came around the bank from her hiding place he
was nowhere in sight. Todd informed her that he had ordered the men to load up the wood, then gone directly to his cabin.
Wilted with relief, she went to her own cabin and sat down on rubbery legs. She knew he would be furious if he ever found
out she had eavesdropped on his exchange with Johnson—heard the Liver Eater’s accusation that they were brothers under the
skin.

“His guilt must eat at him like a cancer,” she murmured, torn between wanting to go to him and offer comfort…and her
own revulsion at what he had been, had done. An educated white man had no excuse to behave so barbarously. But then, as she
turned the whole ghastly episode over in her mind, she realized that it was unfair to judge Clint as harshly as Johnson.

Sky had explained how her brother had buried his trophies and spent days in silence, grieving for what he had done. This confrontation
explained why his Ehanktonwon family knew he could not stay with them. She had seen how his reckless disregard for his own
life had grown the farther upriver they traveled. Some part of him wanted to die. Delilah knew that her friend Sky expected
her to redeem him.

If only she knew how.

Clint never left his cabin until they reached Fort Benton. On the three-day journey from Johnson’s camp to their final destination,
he had his meals and a bottle of whiskey left outside the door. He consumed the whiskey but left the food mostly untouched.
Delilah made several overtures, but he refused to say anything except to order her to leave. At first she worried and paced
the floor nights, fearful about what he would do when they arrived. But by the time the flat, muddy expanse of riverbank dotted
with hastily erected clapboard buildings appeared, Delilah was angry. How dare he hide from her and shirk his responsibilities?

She looked at the desolate waterfront where half a dozen other stern-wheelers were busily disgorging their cargoes. Teamsters
goaded stolid oxen or sturdy mules through the muck with curses and bullwhips, awaiting their turn to pick up the bales, boxes,
barrels and crates filled with goods for the gold camps. Local merchants haggled prices with steamer captains, and warehouse
owners dickered storage rates for consignments already spoken for by gold-camp traders not yet present to accept shipments.

Here and there, the denizens of the local saloons lining the waterfront spilled out to observe and comment upon the latest
arrivals. Some were newly returned from the camps, laden with gold dust and eager to drink up their hard-earned profits. Others
had struck out at panning for gold and hung on the periphery like vultures, waiting to rob or cheat their drunken compatriots.
Slick, hard-eyed card sharks and even harder-looking saloon floozies trolled for customers. The stink of gold and the corruption
that accompanied it hung in the air.

“We require Clint’s assistance, I do believe, my dear,” Horace said to his niece. “Perhaps if I spoke with him—”

“No. He forced us to take him on as a partner. He can damn well sober up and do his job!” Delilah stomped down the deck to
Clint’s door and pounded on it.

Clint had awakened at dawn long before the captain stopped the
Nymph
’s engines. Todd Spearman had fetched him the hot water he’d requested, as well as a large pot of coffee. When he heard the
ruckus on the riverfront he knew they were in Benton. He grimaced at his appearance in the mirror. He had not shaved in days.
A thick, dark stubble of beard combined with bloodshot eyes and shaggy, unkempt hair made him look as bad a customer as any
hanging out at the rowdy saloons in town. He set to work making himself as presentable as possible before disembarking.

When he heard the click of her high-heeled slippers approaching, he knew it was Delilah. Mad as a scalded hen. He couldn’t
blame her. Wiping the last traces of shaving soap from his face, he slipped on a shirt while she pounded on the door. After
tucking it in the waistband of his buckskins, he opened the door, amused to see her small fist raised in midblow. Her lips
rounded in a surprised
O
when she looked at him.

“You fixin’ to knock on me or the door?” he asked with a shaky grin.

“If I was —fixin— to knock on you, I would’ve brought a hammer. Your skull is harder than the door.” She lowered her fist.
“Your eyes look dreadful, like two burned holes in a bed-sheet,” she blurted out.

“You should see them from the inside,” he replied, reaching for his gun belt.

She stood in the doorway of his room, feeling awkward, her eyes sweeping past him as he fastened the weapon around his narrow
hips. She could see the bed where they’d made love. He’d been a different man then…or had he? She honestly did not know,
but this was not the time to consider personal matters. There was business to conduct. “Are you ready to begin unloading?
You’re in charge since Mr. Iversen’s gone,” she said, blotting the perspiration on her forehead with her handkerchief.

Clint noted the freckles dotting her nose and touched the tip of it. “Looks like a sprinklin’ of gold dust.”

“Let’s just see about getting some real gold dust. It’s worth more,” she replied, backing away from him. “The town is filled
with miners spending like drunken sailors.”

“Always the mercenary little soul, aren’t you, darlin’?” he drawled, trying to get her into a better mood.

She ignored him. “We need to collect return passage money from them before they whore, drink and gamble it away. You are in
charge of disposing of that illegal whiskey before any of the soldiers from the fort learn of it.”

“I’ll handle the whiskey deal. The captain knows a couple of merchants who’ll give top dollar for it.”

“Which will have to be handled in the dark of night?” she asked.

“You can count the proceeds by lamplight,” he replied dryly.

“Just as long as we don’t end up in an army prison cell.” She turned and headed for the stairs on the hurricane deck.

He walked beside her. “I’ll never spend another day in a bluebelly prison.”

His grim tone made her pause at the top of the steps and look at him. “I know you were a galvanized Yankee during the war—and
the reason why. Don’t permit your dislike of the army to lead you to any irrational acts,” she said, placing her hand on his
arm.

He gazed at her for a moment, then smiled his old sharkish grin. “I wouldn’t say I
dislike
the bluebellies. More like I hate ’em, but don’t fret, I never let my feelings interfere with business.”

“Splendid,” she said sourly, not at all certain she could trust him. “But I believe I’ll handle any dealings we have with
the army. You just oversee the whiskey sale and the unloading of the rest of the cargo while I tally.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he replied, giving her a mock salute. “You do own 51 percent, after all.”

By the end of the day, the captain had arranged a meeting with several bidders interested in purchasing the whiskey. No one
appeared to be much troubled by an army detachment that knew damned well whiskey was being habitually shipped to the miners.
Clint posted a notice for an auction of their legal cargo, inviting all the local merchants and drummers serving the gold
camps. It would take the best part of the week to assemble enough competitors to get top dollar for everything. The roosters
unloaded about half the goods onto the wide, muddy riverbank and were securing it against inclement weather by lashing it
down with waterproof sailcloth.

“We’ll need to post armed guards for our cargo, I do believe,” Horace said to Daniels as they both surveyed hard-eyed frontiersmen
ambling along the riverbank, armed to the teeth.

“I’ve handpicked the most trustworthy men, those the captain can vouch for. I figure you and I can take turns supervising
them. After Lew Flowers, we can’t afford any more mistakes.”

Horace nodded. “Indeed. Let us hope he was the last of Riley’s ruffians.” He turned back to the boat and looked at the group
of passengers waiting their turn at the table Delilah had set up forward of the now idle boilers. Each paid in advance for
the return journey when the
Nymph
had finished selling all her cargo. The downriver trip would be far swifter, months transformed into days because they would
be moving with the current. He chuckled. “With fares up to two hundred dollars apiece, my niece has been delighted with the
passenger money.”

Clint grinned. “I can imagine. There’ll be lots of others once word reaches the camps. Then more miners who’ve struck paydirt’ll
drift in.”

“How long do you imagine we will be here?” Horace asked.

Clint shrugged. “Hard to say. Longer we wait, the better the profits. Now, I reckon I’ll head over to the Nugget and see a
couple of men about our whiskey. Once the captain and I collect six or seven hundred a barrel for it, I think Deelie’s snit
over carryin’ it will plumb vanish.”