Early Dawn (36 page)

As Eden drifted off into an exhausted sleep, she said a prayer that God would keep Matthew safe. If he died out there, trying to protect her, she would never forgive herself.
Never
. Having that thought helped her to understand Matthew’s guilt over Livvy’s death in a way she’d never been able to before. Eden was glad of that. Matthew Coulter deserved a woman who understood him—a woman who would love him, support him, and stand beside him.

If given the chance, Eden would do everything in her power to be that woman.

Matthew sorely missed Eden when he stopped for the night. Though he’d brought along some of the deer meat, what he cooked up didn’t taste half as good as what she would have fixed. He’d also left her the coffeepot, and the coffin varnish that he boiled in a tin can was so strong it almost made his pant legs roll up and down like a window shade. After eating, he tried entertaining himself by playing the harmonica, but it wasn’t nearly as much fun without Eden to sing along. He ended his repertoire with “Beautiful Dreamer
,
” and as the last note trailed away, tears made his vision blurry.

Feeling foolish, he smothered his fire to make an early night of it. With Eden along, he’d always waited until after daybreak to hit the trail, but now that he was alone, he could light out in the dark if he wanted, and stop to rest the animals during the early dawn, when the dim light hampered their vision.

Using his saddle as a pillow, Matthew stretched out on the ground with only his jacket to shield him. It was so chilly, he could envision waking up with a crust of frost coating him. He didn’t really mind the lack of a bedroll, though. He’d slept with Eden to keep her warm, not the other way around. After three years on the trail, he was used to the cold.

Sighing, he stared at the stars. For a while, he thought about the Sebastians, wondering how far behind him they were. Tomorrow he’d ride in a zigzag pattern again. When he had lured them far enough away from Eden, he would take to a stream, travel a goodly distance, and then break for shore, feathering away his tracks as he went. If he rode far enough north before circling back to the cave, maybe it would be safe for him to take Eden to Denver. Her recent weight loss and pallor truly concerned him. She needed not only to rest and feed herself up, but also to see a doctor. He had a bad feeling those busted ribs weren’t healing right. So far as he knew, there wasn’t much a sawbones could do about that, but maybe there was an elixir to build her strength back up.

Remembering the time when she’d been so mulish about saddling her own horse, he smiled in the darkness. She’d been bound and determined to prove to him that she was as tough as a woman came, and damned if she hadn’t succeeded. If he lived to be a hundred, he would never forget that day at the snake den, how she’d fanned the hammers of those guns. He’d known stouter and sturdier females, but none of them had ever possessed Eden’s pluck.

A funny, achy sensation settled in Matthew’s chest as he recalled their good-byes that afternoon—how she’d clasped his fingers and how her eyes had sparkled so prettily with tears. He’d done a poor job of telling her that he cared for her, and regretted that now. He expected to see her again, but what if he didn’t? He hadn’t said the one word he knew she’d wanted to hear, and he felt like a chicken-livered coward.
Love
. Why was it so hard for him to spit that out?

Matthew guessed it all circled back to Livvy—that feeling way deep inside that he was betraying her. He’d fallen in love with her when he was still in knickers, and he still loved her now. He always would. It felt strange to be having such strong feelings for Eden at the same time, like he’d become a philanderer or something. Yet rationally he knew that wasn’t so. A man couldn’t be unfaithful to a dead woman, only to her memory, and Matthew knew that wasn’t the case with him. He would always treasure his memories of Olivia. He would always hold her in high regard. Never would a word come out of his mouth to malign her character or criticize her in any way.

He was just ready to move on now, to say good-bye and get on with his life.

For the first time in a very long while, Matthew was able to picture Livvy’s face clearly again—the gentleness of her smile, the innocence in her big brown eyes. For so long, he’d remembered only her final moments and never thought about all the good times they’d shared, because it hurt too much. Now, suddenly, the hurting had stopped. He remembered once when he’d tried to carry her through the snow from the cabin to his folks’ house and lost his footing. They’d both ended up buried in a drift. Livvy had been wearing one of her nice dresses, and he’d expected her to get in a grump. Instead, she’d shrieked with laughter, grabbed a handful of snow, and rubbed it in his face. He had retaliated, and the snowball fight was on. They had arrived for supper at his parents’ place rosy-cheeked, soaking wet, and weak in the knees from laughing so hard.

She’d always been such a sweetheart, fussing over him constantly. One year, she’d burned his birthday cake and cried her eyes out over ruining his party. Nothing he said had comforted her. She had wanted it to be a perfect day. Another time she’d scorched his Sunday shirt with the iron and had spent every spare second all the next week making him a new one. And when she’d failed to become pregnant, she fretted because she knew how much he wanted children.

In short, the most important thing to Livvy had always been his happiness, so how could he believe that she would want him to be unhappy now? If she was up there in heaven, like Eden said, Matthew knew she was rejoicing that he’d found someone else. Livvy wouldn’t want him to be alone. She wouldn’t want him to feel guilty or sad. It was time to let her go.

Matthew took a deep breath and slowly released it.
Letting go
. For so long, he’d clung to his sorrow with an iron fist, refusing to turn loose of it. And he’d felt as if a constant, heavy weight rode his shoulders. Now he suddenly felt light as a feather, and
free
. No worry about betrayal, no sense of guilt. He’d been the best husband to Livvy that he’d known how to be. It wasn’t his fault that the Sebastians had come onto Lazy J land that afternoon. It wasn’t his fault that they were murderous bastards. It wasn’t his fault that they’d beaten him senseless and he hadn’t been able to get up to defend his wife. None of it, absolutely none of it, had been his fault. The acceptance added to his relief. He had dragged the guilt around with him long enough.

All day, when he’d started to think about how it had felt to kiss Eden, he’d shoved the thoughts from his mind. And deep down, he knew why. Though it pained him to admit it, Livvy’s kisses had never made his blood heat the way Eden’s had. When he recalled how she’d melted against him and how intoxicating her mouth had tasted, his throat went as dry as a preacher’s sermon.

It wasn’t that he hadn’t thoroughly enjoyed kissing Livvy. It was just that the two women were very different. Livvy had been so shy and overly modest that it had been months before he ever saw her nude, and she’d balked the first few times he’d tried to taste the recesses of her mouth when he kissed her. In bed, he’d tried to be a gentleman about it, never pressing her to do anything that made her feel uncomfortable. Even after five years of marriage, their lovemaking had been pretty tame. He doubted it would be that way with Eden. As soon as he’d convinced her to unclench her teeth while they kissed, she’d held nothing back. He expected she would do the same when they made love. She was an all-or-nothing kind of lady.

There were other differences between her and Livvy. Eden would never cling to the back of his belt and peer out at trouble around his arm. She’d be more inclined to step out in front of him and take a bullet. The thought scared him half to death. He didn’t want her to protect him. It was supposed to be the other way around, but he had a feeling he would play heck ever convincing Eden of that. If trouble knocked, she would answer the door and take it on. He had to respect that, because he would do the same himself, but loving a woman like her was going to be a challenge, and he’d probably be worried about her more often than not.

Before drifting off to sleep, Matthew drew his watch from his pocket to thumb the inscription on its back.
Just this one last time
. The gold case winked in the moonlight, the flash as yellow as sunlight. That was odd. Normally the timepiece looked like tarnished silver in the darkness. It was probably pure silliness, but he took it to be a sign, a last little message from Livvy that she had given him her blessing. He could almost hear her say,
Stop being such a goose, Matthew. Eden is wonderful. Love her with all your heart and don’t look back.
Maybe he was just conjuring up the words he wished he could hear her say, but whether they were all in his imagination or not, it felt good to have them play through his head.

Now that he’d made a commitment to Eden, the watch had to go. He couldn’t expect her to put up with his carrying it. She would know every time he checked the time that he was thinking of Livvy. When he got back to the cave, he would stow it in one of the packs. Someday when he and Eden settled down somewhere, he’d find a special place for it, maybe stored at the bottom of a drawer for safekeeping. He knew without asking that Eden wouldn’t expect him to throw the timepiece away.

Tucking the watch back into his pocket, Matthew tipped his hat down over his eyes. His last thought as he went to sleep was that he wished Eden were there beside him.

 

Over the next three days, Eden gathered edible plants to supplement her stores of food, collected firewood, cooked, cleaned up, took leisurely baths, laundered her clothes, and rested. She couldn’t believe how much she slept. The first morning, she’d lain down again right after breakfast and slept until late afternoon, but even so, she had still been ready for bed when darkness fell. On the morning of the second day, she felt a little less lethargic, but still took long naps in between her chores, and once again slept like a convalescent all night. By day three, she was starting to feel more like her old self. She wolfed down breakfast and then wished she’d cooked more. When she went walking through the woods in search of groundnuts and mushrooms, she felt a bounce in her step again. When she breathed deeply of the fresh mountain air, she felt a pang in her ribs, but the pain no longer nearly bent her double. Matthew had been right: All she had needed was some uninterrupted rest.

She worried about him constantly. Where was he? Was he safe? Was he heading back toward her yet? Sometimes she envisioned him holed up behind rocks, shooting it out with the Sebastians and running low on ammunition. Other times she pictured him at his campfire, cooking or washing dishes. She prayed for his safety. Oh, how she missed him. It was strange how she’d so quickly come to feel lost without him. She yearned to hear the deep, silky tenor of his voice or the bark of his laughter. She wanted to feel the hardness and heat of his big body stretched out beside her at night. She ached for the touch of his hand on hers.

On the fourth day, her concern mounted. He had hoped to be gone for only two or three days. What was taking him so long? What if he was dead? All that afternoon, she kept an ear pricked for the sound of a rider approaching, but the thump of hooves on the forest floor never came, and she went to bed with an ache in her heart. Something had gone wrong. She was sure of it.

By day five, Eden knew she had to come to grips with the fact that Matthew might never return. When the sun began to dip toward the western horizon late that afternoon, she sat beside her small fire, arms locked around her bent knees, face buried in his jeans, and wept.
Oh, God
. She would never see his crooked smile again, never feel his arms around her, never hear his voice. Why had she allowed him to go without her? She could have kept the pace if she’d really tried.

When Eden had cried herself empty of tears, she smothered the fire and went to bed with a sharp ache in her chest that kept her awake for hours.
Matthew
. If he was dead, she would always blame herself. Partners were supposed to stick together.

In the morning, Eden sat by the fire and had another good cry.
Six
days. Something had happened. She had to face it: Matthew never would have stayed away for so long by choice.

So now what? Before leaving, Matthew had asked her to look after herself, and though she hadn’t said she would do that, the promise had been implied when she kept assuring him that she would be fine. She also remembered how she’d harangued him for giving up on life after losing Livvy. Now her own words came back to haunt her. Matthew wouldn’t want her to sit here at the mouth of this cave and die. He’d want her to pick herself up, brush off her britches, and turn her mind to how she was going to survive. She had no horse. The deer he’d left suspended from the tree would soon start to sour, and she’d have no meat. Her brothers were looking for her. She needed to think of a way to signal them so they might find her.

Eden forced herself to her feet. If Matthew was up in heaven, watching her right now, she wanted him to be proud of her.

Her first order of business was figuring out how to preserve the deer meat. She unfastened the rope that suspended the partially consumed carcass from the tree limb and lowered it onto a bed of pine needles that she’d gathered. Then she set to work with a knife to trim away all the meat from the bones. Once again, her torn traveling dress came in handy. Saving back some of the meat to cook later, she laid the rest on the spread cloth, knotted the material into a bundle, and used her rib cage binding as a rope. The creek was ice-cold. Constant submersion in water would turn the meat white on the surface, but the chill would preserve it for a few more days. In the meanwhile, she would have to determine a way to get more meat by herself without firing a gun.

Mindful of attracting bears and cougars, Eden carried the cut-up deer downstream from her camp until she found a sapling along the bank that would provide adequate anchor. She tied one end of the rib cage binding around the bundle’s knot and the other around the slender base of the alder. Soon the meat was floating in the stream. She crouched at the edge to wash her hands. Cutting up meat was bloody business.