ChasetheLightning (28 page)

“What if they’ve sold the property to someone else?”

It was a possibility he refused to consider.

“How far is your property from here?”

“A shade over forty miles.”

She nodded. Her house was about fifty miles from town. She
wondered who was living in her house, and how long it would take to get there
on horseback. They would be almost neighbors. She might even meet them. It
would be interesting to see how the place had looked when it was new.

Thinking of home made her ask, “Is there a house on this
land of yours?”

“Yeah, but it’s not much. Just an old adobe shack.” He took
her hand in his and gave it a squeeze. “We’ll build a new one together.”

* * * * *

Later that night, lying in bed in each other’s arms, they
made plans for the future. They’d build a barn and corrals first, Trey said,
since they could live in the shack for awhile. They’d have to find some brood
mares, just a few to start with, mares with good bloodlines.

“How big a house will we build?” Amanda asked.

“Nothing too big to start with,” Trey replied. “We can
always add on later.”

“I want a big window in front,” Amanda said. “And one in the
kitchen, so I can look out and watch you work.”

“And a big bedroom,” he said, grinning, “with a big bed.”

“And a bathroom, inside the house.”

Trey grunted. “Well, a tub, anyway. And a big wood stove to
heat the water. I doubt if we’ll be able to find a blue tub.”

“The color won’t matter,” she said wistfully. She put her
hand over her stomach. “And a smaller bedroom, just in case.”

He stared at her.

“Well, it could happen, you know,” she said, feeling
suddenly defensive. “You want children, don’t you?”

He dragged his hand over his jaw. “Sure, it’s just that I
never…” He shook his head, his gaze darting to her stomach. “Are you
expecting?”

“I don’t know.” She made a face at him. “It’s possible, you
know.” More than possible, she thought, as often as they had made love lately.
And now that she thought of it, she realized she hadn’t had her period since
she’d been here. She felt a flutter of apprehensive excitement. “Very
possible.”

Trey stared at her. The timing couldn’t be worse, he thought
bleakly. He was on the run. There was no telling what the future held, or how
long Amanda would be here. He’d never given any thought to having kids before,
had never known he wanted one, until now. His child. His and Amanda’s.

“Trey? You’re not mad, are you?”

“No, sweetheart, I’m not mad.” He laid his hand over hers.
“It’s just that the whole idea of being a father is new to me.”

“You want kids, don’t you?”

He nodded as he drew her into his arms and nuzzled her neck.
“A pretty little girl with red hair, just like you.”

* * * * *

They went to the Land Office first thing in the morning,
even before breakfast. The property that Trey wanted was still available, being
held by the local bank. They visited the bank next, and Amanda sat back and
watched while Trey and the bank officer haggled over price and terms. Trey’s
poker winnings made a sizable down payment, and the bank officer said the
papers making him the owner of 150 acres of land would be ready for signing by
the time they finished breakfast.

Their next stop was the restaurant, where they ordered ham
and eggs. “Not as good as yours,” Trey remarked, though she noticed he ate
enough for a small army.

Next, they went to the general store and loaded up on
supplies. Amanda bought dish towels and a zinc washtub, an apron, soap, flour,
sugar, salt, pepper, baking soda, yeast, coffee and a coffee grinder. She
picked up a variety of tinned fruit, a hunk of cheese, dried apples, several
boxes of matches, a kerosene lamp, a flour sifter, an iron, which weighed a
ton, a Dutch oven, and numerous other household items.

She found a couple of shirts and a sheepskin jacket for
Trey, two cotton dresses, underwear, and a coat and bonnet for herself. She
picked out blankets and pillows for their bed. Trey added a shovel, a
wheelbarrow, an ax, a rake, a hammer and nails, a rifle and several boxes of
ammunition, a curry comb and a couple of brushes, and a rasp.

They looked through a mail order catalog and picked out a
high-backed sofa, a kitchen table and two chairs, a brass bed, and a stove.
Lastly, they bought a rooster and a half-dozen red hens.

It was really going to happen, she thought. The two of them
were going to set up housekeeping in an adobe shack and build a horse ranch.
She sure hoped Trey knew what he was doing, because she didn’t have a clue!

They had to rent a wagon and horses from the livery to haul
their supplies in. Trey tied Relámpago to the back of the wagon, gave Amanda a
boost onto the high-sprung seat. Hopping up beside her, he took up the reins
and they were on their way.

* * * * *

It was, indeed, a shack. A fair-sized one, though, with a
living room, a kitchen that faced the east, and a bedroom barely big enough to
turn around in. The windows were covered with burlap, the door was made of oak
and had a sturdy cross-bar on the inside. The floors were dirt. There was a
large fireplace for heating and cooking.

Trey squeezed her hand. “Remember, it’s only temporary.”

Nodding, she forced a smile.

Only temporary became her mantra.

Living in the adobe shack was no worse than living with the
Apache, but here she had no other women to laugh with while she looked for wood
or hauled water from the stream, or washed their clothes, no one to talk to
while she cleaned the game Trey brought home. She missed Yellow Calf Woman and
Walker on the Wind.

But she didn’t complain. Couldn’t complain, not when Trey
worked so hard. He spent long hours laying out the foundation for the barn,
plowing the ground behind the shack so she could plant vegetables, cutting
trees for poles to build a corral for Relámpago, and for the mares he hoped to
buy the following spring.

So much work, and none of it easy.

At first, she didn’t think she’d ever get the hang of
cooking in a Dutch oven. Time and again, the food came out cooked on the
bottom, but not on the top, or burned on one side but raw on the other.

Washing clothes was perhaps the worst chore of all. She grew
to hate the big old wash tub. A fire had to be kept going under the tub to keep
the water hot, the clothes had to be rubbed back and forth over a scrub board
to remove the dirt, then rinsed and hung to dry. Oh, Lord, how she missed her
washer and dryer, her dishwasher, the microwave. Not to mention the grocery
store, where bread came in lovely packages and meat was already aged and
butchered. She missed hot bubble baths, and running water. And toilet paper.
Relieving herself in a chamber pot, or in the privy that Trey built out back,
was perhaps the worst part of living in the past.

She missed indoor heat and plumbing, her refrigerator,
television. Right now, even old
I Love Lucy
reruns sounded good.

Sometimes she was overwhelmed with homesickness. Whenever
that happened, whenever she thought she couldn’t go on for another minute, she
would go find Trey. In his arms, whatever trivial thing was bothering her
melted away. She never tired of looking at him, watching him work. Tall and
lean, he moved with an assurance that she found oddly comforting. There was
nothing to be afraid of so long as he was here, nothing they couldn’t do,
together. He never seemed to get discouraged. He knew what had to be done, and
he did it.

He was easy to live with, never critical of her efforts,
however bad they might be, willing to let her make her own mistakes but always
ready and willing to help her if she asked for it.

And no matter how difficult the days might be, the nights
were always wonderful. Sometimes they sat under the stars and imagined how
things would be when the house was finished and the corral was filled with
prime horseflesh. Sometimes they went skinny-dipping in the stream, then curled
up in front of the fire with a blanket over their shoulders and thought about
names for the baby.

The baby. She was certain she was pregnant now. She had all
the symptoms her married girlfriends had complained of. She was weepy and
irritable, her breasts were tender, her ankles were swollen.

Trey was the soul of patience, always understanding, ever
tender, able to laugh her out of her moods. She woke up in his arms in the
morning, fell asleep in his arms at night.

By the time she was four months pregnant, her moodiness
seemed to have passed, she was full of energy, and she was certain being
pregnant was the most wonderful thing in the world.

Now, standing in the doorway waiting for Trey to come to
supper, she was filled with a sense of contentment. The corral was finished.
The barn was almost up. Their furniture had arrived and they had a table to eat
on, a bed to sleep in, and a stove to cook on. She had made curtains for the
windows, a tablecloth for the table. She had planted flowers in front of the
shack, a vegetable garden in the back, made a winding path lined with rocks
that led from the house to the stream. Chickens scratched in the dirt, digging
up worms for their chicks.

She blew out a sigh as she placed a hand over her burgeoning
belly. She couldn’t wait to see her child, hold it in her arms. Trey’s child. A
son, with his dark hair and eyes.

She smiled as she watched Trey walk toward her, felt her
heart beat a little faster as he drew near. His face and chest were sheened
with sweat, his hands were dirty, but she didn’t care. She threw herself in his
arms and kissed him.

“Hey, sweetheart.”

“Hey yourself. I missed you.”

He grinned down at her. Whether he was gone an hour or all
day, she always met him with a hug and a smile, always told him she missed him.
He couldn’t imagine his life without her, didn’t know what he’d ever done to
deserve her.

He placed his hand over her belly. She had always been
beautiful, but never more so than now, when she was carrying his child. “How’s
my son?”

“Sleeping, I think. Dinner’s ready. Are you hungry?”

He nodded. “Just let me get cleaned up.”

He washed up in the tub alongside the shack while she went
in to set the table. There had been times, when she was first learning how to
cook Western-style, when it had been all he could do to choke down his dinner,
but she’d become a darn fine cook in the last couple months. She had even learned
to make a melt-in-your-mouth apple pie.

He dried off, then took a minute to look out over the land.
His land. It had taken a lot of hard work, but it had been worth it. The corral
was sturdy. As soon as the barn was finished, he’d start looking for some brood
mares. And then they’d get to work on a new house.

Whistling softly, he walked around the shack to the front
door and stepped inside, thinking himself the luckiest man in the world.

* * * * *

They had worked hard the last few months and Trey decided it
was time for a trip to town. Amanda didn’t argue. She was ready for a change of
scene, especially when it meant spending the night in town, bathing in a real
tub in hot water she didn’t have to heat on the stove. Shopping. Eating a meal
she hadn’t had to prepare. Seeing other people, even people she didn’t know.
Besides, there were a few things she wanted to buy for the house. She also
needed some flannel so she could start sewing things for the baby, and muslin
for diapers.

She put on her bonnet, tied the strings beneath her chin,
tucked her shopping list into her skirt pocket.

Trey was waiting for her outside. He lifted her onto
Relámpago’s back and handed her the reins before swinging effortlessly onto the
back of a leggy bay. The mare was the first he’d bought. She had long clean
lines and a gentle disposition, but she was still a little wild and he didn’t
trust her to carry Amanda.

“Ready?” he asked.

“Ready.”

It was a beautiful morning for a ride, warm and clear. The
Saguaro and the Palo Verde were in bloom; wildflowers made bright splashes of
color between gray-green clumps of sage and spiny cactus. They passed a
slow-moving tortoise. An eagle soared effortlessly overhead, making lazy
circles before plummeting to earth to snatch some unsuspecting creature in its
talons. Trey’s mount shied to one side as a rabbit sprang across her path. He
spoke softly to the mare and she quickly settled back down, soothed by the
sound of his voice and the gentle touch of his hand on her neck.

He had a way with females, Amanda thought with a grin. Human
or equine.

* * * * *

It was after dark when they arrived in town. After leaving
the horses at the livery, they got a room at the hotel. After washing up, they
went to get something to eat.

It was wonderful to sit at a table she hadn’t set, to eat a
full course meal she hadn’t had to prepare, to know she wouldn’t have to heat a
pan of water and wash and dry the dishes when they were through.

Feeling spoiled and happy, she sat back in her chair and
smiled at Trey, thinking, not for the first time, that he was easily the most
handsome man she had ever known.

“What are you thinking about?” she asked, noting his sober
expression. “Is something wrong?”

“You’re gonna have a baby.”

“Yes, I know.”

“We ought to get married.”

“We are married.”

“I mean here, in town. I don’t want anyone calling my son a
bastard because his parents weren’t properly married.”

There was an edge in his voice, a tinge of bitterness that
made her wonder whether his father had married his mother. “All right, if you
think we should.”

“I’ll see about it tomorrow, first thing.”

“That means another honeymoon,” she said, smiling at him in
hopes of lightening his mood. “Although I don’t think we can top the last one,
do you?”