Frontier Woman (4 page)

Three of the girls rushed to help Felicia get back up, while Cricket looked daggers at the rest, several of whom had started to weep, daring them to say anything.

Amber’s hysterical screaming brought her mother on the run.

“You little heathen! Look what you’ve done,” Martha Kuykendall accused, grabbing Cricket by the shoulders and shaking her until her teeth rattled. Realizing at last exactly whom she held, Martha suddenly released Cricket, who stumbled away a step or two.

Cricket was in shock. Dazed. Disbelieving. Defensive. It wasn’t her fault. Felicia had only gotten what she had coming to her. Cricket wasn’t a freak. She wasn’t. Just because she didn’t want to wear some old frilly dress was no reason to call her a freak. Felicia wore pants, too, sometimes. She couldn’t deny it. So why was Cricket a freak because she’d worn buckskins to a birthday party? It was all a big mistake.

Cricket’s mouth was dry of spittle, yet she turned and tried to croak an explanation to Amber anyway. “Amber, I—”

Amber burst into tears. “How could you do this, Cricket? I thought you were my friend. You’ve ruined my birthday party. I’ll never forgive you. Never. Get out! Go home! I never want to see you again.”

Cricket pleaded with her eyes, but she wasn’t about to beg. She stared at the other girls until there wasn’t a one without her gaze focused on the shiny toes of her shoes. Then she spat on the porch at Felicia Myers’s feet, and left. She didn’t need any of them.

But she missed playing with Amber Kuykendall.

And she never got invited to another birthday party.

After that, she’d built walls to protect herself. She never let what other people said about anything she decided to do bother her. She drew her confidence solely from Rip’s approval.

So why had this horse thief’s scorn suddenly mattered?

Cricket’s eyes gradually focused again on the man in front of her, trying to remember the look on his face when she’d caught him at the pond. Fiery eyes, full of pride, anger, and a little surprise, then taunting, teasing, burning with some unknown emotion. What color were his eyes? When she couldn’t remember, Cricket felt a momentary panic, followed by a relaxation of her entire body. With the recess of memory, perhaps the awful implications of the day’s events would begin to fade as well.

She was determined to forget the warmth of that Tennessee horse thief’s lips upon her throat and mouth. Even as she fought to deny the past hours, her fingertips found their way to her swollen lips in wonder.

A man had kissed her.

To acknowledge the rightness of that kiss meant a denial of her entire existence. It would turn her world upside down. And Cricket liked her life exactly the way it was. She knew what was expected from her. Rip had made no pretense about what he wanted from his daughters, and Cricket had tried hard to be everything her father had wished for in a son. She was an expert shot. She could ride like the wind. She could break a wild bronc and track better than an Indian. She always strived to win and never settled for second best. And even though it was the part of her life she liked the least, she knew when to plant cotton and when to pick it. In actual fact, she’d never failed at anything she set her mind to do, and she was ready to try anything once.

But not kissing. Or touching. Or being female.

She’d played the role Rip had given her for too long and knew it too well to want to give it up now. No one was going to start changing her life around, especially not some too-big-for-his-britches horse thief. Cricket groaned at the thought of Rip ever finding out that, momentarily at least, the horse thief had gotten the better of her. She could have argued the thief was stronger, and bigger, and oh, so clever. But excuses didn’t work with Rip. Cricket groaned again. Damn that horse thief.

“Does it hurt bad, Cricket?”

Cricket glanced over and discovered an anxious Bay riding knee to knee with her.

“What?”

“You were groaning again. I thought maybe it’s more than . . . more than the miseries hurting you . . . I thought maybe the horse thief had—” Bay stopped and gulped, unwilling to think what the thief might have done. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

“Stop trying to mother me, and I’ll be fine!”

Cricket took one look at Bay’s liquid eyes, her lips trembling at the reproof, and her harshness melted. “Oh, hell’s bells! I . . .”

Bay waited for Cricket to say more, but she merely stared morosely at the man who raced boldly ahead of them. When a full minute had passed, Bay could stand the waiting no longer. “Cricket?”

Cricket turned and scowled at Bay, all her pent-up frustration and anger and confusion contained in that one forceful black expression.

Bay kicked her horse into a gallop, leaving Cricket sputtering in the dust.

“Bay, wait,” Cricket shouted after the disappearing figure. “I’m not mad at you. It’s this good-for-nothing horse thief. I can’t stand that he—”

The thief turned, and Cricket shut her mouth. She defiantly met the look in his golden eyes, daring him to say anything. She was spoiling for a fight, but the hard-muscled horse thief didn’t give it to her. He angled his head, as though to question whether she could stay on her horse without falling off, and headed away again at a trot.

It was only then she noticed they’d reached the double row of facing log cabins at the edge of the cotton fields where Rip’s sixty field slaves lived. Each cabin had a garden behind it where even now the trash gang of slave children worked hoeing, thinning, and suckering corn. Nearby, Mammy Pleasant cared for the smallest of the children, while in the cotton fields, the hoe hands did for the cotton what their children did for the corn.

The plantation house, nestled between three giant live oaks, lay hidden a half mile to the south of them, and the cotton gin and baling screw stood a half mile to the north.

When they finally arrived at the two-story white frame house, its double gallery porch was awash with the last warm, golden rays of the afternoon sun. A balding Negro man, hands gnarled with age, was seated in one of the two rockers on the lower gallery porch.

“Where’s Rip?” Cricket asked.

“Your pa’s gone visitin’ Señor Juan Carlos Guerrero. He ain’t goin’ to be back till late this evenin’,” the Negro answered.

Cricket turned to the thief and said, “Guess you’ll do best tied up in the barn till Rip gets home.”

“Aw, hell. Look, kid—”

Cricket swiftly pulled one of the thief’s Patersons from her belt, and the tall man found himself looking down the barrel of his own gun, which was pointed right at his nose.

“Don’t say another word,” she warned.

“Hey, Brava, I—”

Cricket cocked the gun.

The thief pressed his lips in a flat line. He looked around for some other authority he could appeal to, but there wasn’t any. His body was a spring coiled for instant action, but Cricket left him no choice except to head in the direction she gestured with his gun.

They passed the kitchen, the cistern, and the bachelors’ quarters on their way to the barn located a short distance north of the house. Cricket herded the mares and the thief’s gelding into a corral beside the barn with the help of another Negro, more bald than the first, and no younger.

“See you got them mares back,” he said.

“Sure did, Jim. Caught me a thief, too.”

“Good-lookin’ man-buck, ain’t he?”

At Jim’s observation, Cricket gave the thief a thorough once-over, focusing on the width of his chest in contrast to the narrowness of his hips, the casual stance that disguised brute strength. Her attempted nonchalance fell somewhat flat because in her mind she also saw him naked, water streaming in rivulets down his brawny chest, the curving scar on his flank disappearing into the shiny waters of the pond.

She flushed when the stranger returned her bold perusal, but managed an unconcerned shrug before agreeing, “He’s all right. But looks don’t matter much when you aren’t going to live long enough to make use of them.”

She gestured again with the Paterson and the thief moved to the door of the barn. There they encountered a third Negro, his wiry hair frizzed into a gray halo around his coal-black face. His dark eyes were perceptive, and once he got a good look at the stranger, cautious.

“ ’Lo there, Cricket,” he said, taking the reins of Cricket’s pinto as she stepped down from the saddle.

“Hello, August.” Cricket grabbed her saddlebag and used the gun to head the stranger into the barn. “I’ll need your help tying up this horse thief.”

“Sure, Cricket, I’ll get some rope. Don’t let all them wolves in here, now. That ole mare, Bluebonnet, she gonna have Valor’s foal soon, and I don’t want her riled none.”

Cricket sent Rascal and Ruffian away but kept Rogue at her side as she ushered the horse thief into the shadowy barn, redolent with the lingering smell of fresh manure.

“Smells good in here,” the thief said.

“Smells like a barn,” Cricket retorted.

“That’s what I said.”

August tied the thief’s hands together snugly but not uncomfortably, then forced him down on the clean straw in the stall next to the foaling mare, before also securing the rope to one of the low slats in the partition.

“You be fine now, mister, long as you don’t try nothin’. Cricket, she usually shoot first and ask questions later,” he said with a toothy grin that appeared suspended in the darkness of the barn.

“I have a feeling you’re not kidding,” the thief muttered.

August chuckled. “I kin watch ’im for you, Cricket, since I gotta be here for Bluebonnet anyway.”

“I don’t mind watching after Bluebonnet till Rip gets home. Why don’t you get some rest,” she suggested, setting the thief’s Patersons in the straw at the edge of the stall, well out of his reach.

“Matter of fact, I could use a nap. That ole mare, she liable to keep me up some later tonight,” August said.

After August had gone, Cricket wondered whether she should’ve volunteered to care for Bluebonnet. She felt distinctly woozy. But she wanted to be here to see the pleased look on Rip’s face when she presented him with the thief who’d stolen his mares. She also wanted to confront him about that marriage business right away. Rip wouldn’t need to find her a husband because she wasn’t ever going to get married.

Bluebonnet whickered softly, and Cricket moved into the stall with the heavy-laden mare.

“Hello, pretty lady.” Cricket rubbed the mare’s nose and then scratched behind her ears. Her hand slid down the mare’s neck and over her greatly distended girth. Then Cricket laid her cheek against the mare’s neck and let her hand caress the taut belly that held Valor’s foal.

“You’ll foal a handsome colt, girl, I know it. A fine son for Valor . . . or maybe a beautiful filly, who’ll grow up sleek and strong like you.”

All the time she spoke, Cricket handled the mare, recognizing in the tensing flesh the labor contractions that were already under way. It was the mare’s first foal, and Cricket wondered whether the animal had any inkling of what was happening to her.

“How long before the foal’s born?”

Cricket searched the stranger’s face and saw he’d somehow discerned the mare’s laboring state.

“It’s her first, so it may be a while.”

“You’re in no condition to help.”

Cricket scowled. “I’ll manage.”

At that moment Bluebonnet’s legs buckled at the knees, and Cricket made room as the mare lay down. Cricket dropped to her knees in the straw beside the mare, which was breathing heavily.

“Shouldn’t you call August?” the thief asked.

“I’ve done this before. I can handle it.”

“I could help.”

Startled at the thief’s offer, Cricket contemplated the man’s solemn face for a moment before she repeated firmly, “I can handle it.”

“All right, Brava, but the offer holds.”

Over the next few hours, Cricket wished more than once that she’d called August or taken up the thief’s offer of help. It wasn’t a particularly hard labor, but because it was Valor’s foal, and the mare’s first, Cricket found herself worrying over every little thing that didn’t happen exactly as she expected. To complicate matters, her own cramps, temporarily dulled by the whiskey she’d drunk on the way home, began to attack with renewed vigor, and she wasn’t willing to lessen what ability she had to help the mare by drinking more. Cricket swiped at the sweat on her forehead and sighed heavily, soothing the tired mare with her hands as best she could.

“You’re doing fine.”

Cricket’s head snapped up at the thief’s comforting words, which were the first he’d spoken since he’d made his offer of help.

“I don’t need you to tell me that.”

She watched the thief frown at her sharp retort. Well, it was true. But why couldn’t she have accepted his compliment with more grace? For his approval
had
pleased her. She frowned in confusion at her inexplicable prickliness with the stranger. At that moment the mare grunted loudly, and Cricket saw the foal’s nose appear.

“Keep working, girl. He’s almost here. Keep on working. Don’t give up now,” Cricket urged.

Within minutes the foal was born, a fine colt.

“Oh! He’s beautiful!”

Cricket slumped back in the straw, leaning against the slats of the stall as she watched the mare lick the colt clean. Bluebonnet soon rose to her feet, followed by the colt, wavering on its spindly legs. Cricket felt her throat swelling closed at the overwhelming wonder of new life but managed a choked laugh of delight as the tiny colt nudged at its mother’s teat.

At that moment a horrible cramp hit Cricket, and the laugh became a gasp. She waited for it to pass and then shoved herself up out of the straw. She headed for the silver flask she’d left in her saddlebag, which was draped over the stall in which the thief was tied.

Cricket grasped the flask in one hand as she slid down into the straw, leaning her back against the stall partition opposite the stranger. Once she was comfortable, the gray wolf, which had been relegated to the far side of the barn during Bluebonnet’s labor, stretched out beside her. She pulled her knees up tight to her chest, trying to lessen the pain of the cramps without drinking any more whiskey. God, she felt so awful. And she was so tired. Her eyelids kept drooping closed, so she widened her eyes unnaturally and blinked several times in an attempt to keep them open. She had to stay awake and wait for Rip.