Come Spring (32 page)

“Shut up, you two. I’m about to go plumb crazy sittin’ up here on the side of this mountain listening to you chip away at each other.” Cliff Wiley hated them both, the snow, the cold, and the wind-beaten tent they had slept in every night for the past three weeks.

“How much longer do you think we’ll have to be here, Cliff? I can’t take it anymore,” hefty Denton whined. “Hell, I’m starvin’ for a decent meal.”

“You wouldn’t starve if we tied you to a tree and left you out all winter,” Virge mumbled.

“I said cut it out,” Cliff warned them.

“Shit.” Denton looked despondent. He took a piece of jerky out of his coat pocket and tried to console himself with it.

“Couple more warm days like we just had and the snow’ll be down low enough so we can work our way through the pass.”

“Maybe we could dig our way through now,” Virge suggested.

Denton looked scared. With a mouth full of jerky he mumbled something that sounded like “Avalanche.”

Cliff stared up at the mountainside. “Snow’s too hard by now. Wind’s packed it down like rock.”

“What day is it? I lost track,” Denton said, taking another chaw of the jerky.

“End of March,” Cliff said.

Virge stood up and stared at the pass with his usual anticipation and enthusiasm. “Lookit that rock showin’ there on the side of the cliff. You remember seein’ that yesterday? I don’t. I swear, we’re gonna wake up one mornin’ soon and just like Moses wadin’ through the Red Sea, we’re gonna ride through that pass, find us that little gal, and be set for life.”

“I
T
’S going to be a wonderful picnic, Buttons. Just wait and see.”

Wrapping the last of their provisions in a dish towel, Annika tied the bundle at the corners and then made sure she had everything. “Can you think of anything else we need?” she asked the child, not really expecting an answer. She had taken to talking to Buttons rather than Buck, since he wasn’t likely to be around anyway. During the long week since their argument, he had taken to disappearing again, distancing himself from both of them.

“I wish I knew how to make some
koekjes
like my mama. Have you ever had a cookie?” Annika paused at her task and looked down at Buttons who stood listening intently beside the table, all bundled up in her coat and ready to go.

“Cookies?” Buttons parroted.

Annika sighed. She was no closer to an answer to her dilemma than she had been before, and nothing took her mind off her problem for long. She wanted Buck, she wanted to see Baby Buttons have all the things a child was entitled to—love, a good home, the advantages she grew up with. But she could not come to terms with living so far from civilization, nor did she feel right about taking Buttons away from Buck to find her a home. Baby belonged with him. He loved her, and he was her family. But as Annika watched the child run across the room to collect her sad wooden doll to take along on their outing, she couldn’t help but think of all the things her own family could give the child.

She could just imagine her parents’ reaction when she arrived in Boston and announced that she was going to adopt the child of her abductor; Caleb, always the lawyer, would ask questions until he felt comfortable with her decision or had convinced her to give it up. Her mother would think things through silently, keeping her own counsel until she talked it over privately with Caleb, then give Annika her decision. Auntie Ruth would want whatever Annika did, but still she would sequester herself with her star charts and then advise her when and how she felt she should proceed.

“We go now?” Baby tugged on Annika’s coat until she bent down and lifted her into her arms.

“Right now. It’s too beautiful a day to waste.”

She picked up the bundle of food with her free hand. The door opened before she could reach around Baby to grasp the handle.

With his gun over his shoulder and his knife belted to his thigh, Buck stood on the threshold, staring down at them. A brief glance took in their coats and the bundle in Annika’s hand. He felt his stomach knot as his hands went clammy.

“Going someplace?”

Annika saw the dark suspicion in his eyes. “On a picnic. It’s a beautiful day.”

“A picnic, huh?”

She could see he didn’t believe her. Did he actually think she would leave him and take the child without so much as a good-bye? Did he think she would steal away like a thief in the night?

“Want to go with us?” She shifted the child on her hip.

Buck reached out and took Baby from her with a quick “She’s getting heavy.” He looked down at the bundle in Annika’s other hand. “Did you ever stop to think you might be in danger having this little picnic alone?”

“It’s a beautiful day,” she began, then the dark warning in his eyes called to mind Baby’s near drowning. “I wasn’t going anywhere near the creek,” she assured him.

“I wasn’t thinking of that. I’ve seen signs of cat around.”

Annika laughed. “Cat?”

“Mountain lion.”

She immediately sobered. “Oh.”

“Yeah, oh.”

Suddenly she saw the excuse she needed to have him join them. “Then I guess you really do need to come along. I have plenty of provisions packed. Actually, I’m waging a one-woman campaign to finish all that elk so that you’ll bring home something else to eat.”

He ignored her use of the word home. She didn’t mean it, after all. “What else is in there?”

“Cornbread.”

He stepped aside to let her pass. Before he closed the door, he went in the cabin and called out over his shoulder, “I’ve got some wine.”

“Wine? Where have you been hiding it?” Annika laughed and stuck her head inside as he moved barrels and sacks on the floor. She watched him pull out a tall, amber glass bottle with a cork sticking half out of the top. “If I had known you’d been hiding wine, I would have finished it by now.”

“Maybe that’s why I kept it hidden. Even I’ve heard all about how well-bred city ladies like a glass of wine now and again.”

She couldn’t tell if he was teasing her or not, but she doubted it. “I can’t help what I am, Buck.”

“That goes the same for me.”

It was too fine a day to argue, so Annika did not rebut his remark. Instead, she led the way until they had wandered far enough up a nearby hillside that they could look down on the cabin and the valley beyond.

She pointed to a small meadow, a clearing amid the pines where the snow had melted and patches of pebbled ground showed through. Melting snow ran in rivulets carving glittering ribbons down the mountainside. The wind sang high in the trees, whispered through the upper branches as it carried with it a hint of the fine weather to come. Instead of cheering her, Annika found the warm spring breeze sang a song of parting. She shook off her dark thoughts and spread their picnic out on a large flat boulder, one that was wide enough for them both to sit on and use as a table.

Buck set his rifle down beside them and put the bottle of wine in the center of the cloth.

“I didn’t bring glasses,” Annika said.

“We can share the bottle, if you don’t mind.”

Their gazes collided across the picnic. “Of course not.”

The bottle would touch his lips and then hers. The thought sent a chill down her spine. It had been a long week, she admitted to herself. Seven whole days. Every night she had been tempted to surrender to the need Buck Scott had awakened in her. When the fire burned low and Baby Buttons was sound asleep in her bed, Annika had been ready to throw caution to the winds and confess to Buck that she needed him, that she wanted to have him make love to her again. But she knew that come the dawn they would only face the same argument again. Would he go down the mountain, or would she stay with him, live here in the wilderness and be his wife and Baby’s mother? The answer to being a wife and mother was a simple yes—but no matter how much she loved him, she was not ready to give up the life she had known for one of such isolation.

Buck stretched out on his back on the warm surface of the boulder and watched the clouds play across the vibrant blue sky. For one small fragment of time he wanted not to think, to put aside the pestering thoughts that plagued him, and be happy with the moment. He was alive, the sun was shining, and the woman he loved was at his side.

He tried to take in the scene as a stranger might—the two of them sitting on the rock, their picnic dinner waiting, the bottle of wine catching the sunlight. Annika had spread her thick coat wide and now sat on it. The concentrated sunlight in the meadow made the temperature warm enough for her not to need anything but her wool suit.

Buck snuck a glance in her direction and found she had mimicked his posture. She was lying across the rock on her side facing away from him so that she could watch Baby gather shining pebbles. Her clothing was frayed from constant use, singed around the front of the hem, and wrinkled beyond hope. Even the cuffs of her white blouse beneath the tight-fitting jacket were worn. Her once perfect, very expensive kid boots were beyond salvaging, ruined by mud and water. Her thick, dark blond hair was streaked with sunshine and tied back in a braid.

She would say she never looked worse.

He thought she’d never been more beautiful.

Buck watched as Annika absently fingered the slight scar at her temple. He was proud of his handiwork. As soon as he’d removed the stitches, he had made her rub the angry red mark with bear grease. Now, there were only tiny marks where the stitches had been.

Baby ran around the rock. Annika turned to follow her progress. Their eyes met again.

Annika touched her scar once more. “Did you ever think of becoming a doctor?”

Her words burned like whiskey poured into a raw wound. He steeled himself not to react to her innocent suggestion. “Give up, Annika.”

She pulled herself up to a sitting position, then drew her feet up until she could rest her head on her knees. As she spoke, she worked a patch of mud off the toe of her shoe with a ragged fingernail. “No. I’m serious. It just came to me that you would make an excellent doctor and I just wondered if you had ever thought of it.”

“No,” he lied.

“You have such a gift for healing, though. I mean, look at this scar.” She brushed back the few escaped strands of hair that hid her temple.

He didn’t have to look at the scar to know it was well healed and barely visible. He’d checked it every day when she wasn’t aware he was looking.

“It hardly shows at all anymore. Your stitches were so perfect... and when I think of the way you brought Baby through her fever and cured my sore throat. How many other people know so much about which herbs to use for which illness?”

“Plenty of them.”

“Ah, but how many of them would also make excellent surgeons?”

Buck drew himself up on an elbow and turned to face her. His heart had already been pounding with her so near, and now with her talk of his becoming a doctor, she was driving him crazy in more ways than one. “What are you talking about?”

Excited by the fact that he was even half willing to listen, Annika made certain Baby was playing nearby and then turned her attention to him. “Buck, I’ve never seen anyone as skilled with a knife as you are—”

“I guess not. You never even saw anyone skin a rabbit before I showed you how. That doesn’t give you much to compare me with.”

She lifted her chin defiantly. “The human body isn’t all that different from other animals’, not when you consider things like livers and hearts and, well”—she waved her hand in the air—“all that. You already know how to identify those organs in animals. Why, I’ll bet you could hold your own in any anatomy class.”

“You’ve been up here too long. This thin air isn’t good for you. Let’s eat and get back down the hill.”

“How did you learn all you know about healing?”

“Pass the cornbread.” He drew the cork out of the wine. He didn’t know why he loved her. She really was an irritating woman. “Baby, get over here and eat,” he called out.

“Not Baby!” came the child’s sharp reply.

“Buttons, come eat, then.”

“Buck, are you listening to me at all?” Annika persisted.

“I’m trying not to, but you keep yammering.”

“Have you ever stitched up anyone before, or was my cut beginner’s luck?”

Disgruntled, he took a bite of cornbread and made her wait until he swallowed. “Of course I sewed people up before. There was no one else around to do it.”

Excited, she refused the cornbread he offered, but took the wine and without thinking, took a hefty swig. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and passed the bottle back to him.

Buck watched in amazement. The woman was on a mission.

“What about when you were buffalo hunting?” she asked.

“What about it?”

“Did you ever stitch anyone up, anyone not in your family?”

He was hesitant to answer, then finally admitted, “Well, yeah.”

“Who?”

With a shrug, “I don’t know, one or two others. Sometimes a knife would slip and they’d need sewin’ up.”

“And why didn’t anyone else do it?”

“Just because.”

“Just because you were the best around, right?”

His pa used to tell everyone that, but there was no way he’d admit as much to Annika.

“Am I right?” She insisted he answer.

“Let it go, Annika.”

“How did you learn about herbs and salves and those teas you brew up?”

How could he tell her it seemed he’d always known about healing? He’d picked it up here and there, took to it easily. As a midwife, his ma had always had healing herbs growing around their place because the hill folk had come to her for cures. When his pa took them and left home, he learned more as they traveled across country, always collected whatever herbs and plants he would need and continued to learn different ways with unfamiliar plants. He’d always taken care of them all, Pa, Sissy, Patsy.

And he’d failed with all three.

“It’s not impossible, you know,” she pushed.

Buck sighed. It was a heavy sigh, long and deep. Would she never cease?

Annika knew she had pushed too far when she heard him sigh and felt him shut her out again. Reminded of her father and his intense questioning, she wished she had never opened her mouth about the possibility of his becoming a doctor. After all, it would take him from months to years of study either at a university or an accredited medical school. He would need money to attend and someone to care for Baby Buttons while he did. And he would have to leave his precious valley.