Gear, W Michael - Novel 05 (82 page)

 
          
 
"But they died. I know." Ritshard
tightened his grip on her hand. "God is either a bastard, or He isn't what
we believe Him to be. There's always a flaw in the stories we're taught. At
least, there is in the Christian dogma. From what you say about the Shoshoni,
it's probably the same, right? Always a problem when you really think about
what the story means?"

 
          
 
"Yes!" she cried happily. "I
was always told to fear the dead. That their ghosts would be angry if they
weren't cared for properly and sent across the sky to the Land of the Dead.
Why, Ritshard? My husband, he was a good man. His mugwa was good, because I saw
it reflected in his eyes. Why would it change because of death?" She
flicked a fly away.

 
          
 
"Do all Indians have these beliefs? Or
are some different?"

 
          
 
"The Pawnee think the world was created
by Tirawahat, The-Expanse-of-Heaven,' and Morning Star had to fight a war to
mate with Evening Star. And from that mating, the first woman was born. The
Pakiani believe the world was created by Napi. In the beginning it was all
water, and an animal had to dive to the bottom to bring up mud for the Flat
Pipe to rest on. Everyone has a different story. Can they all be true?"

 
          
 
A twinkle glowed in Ritshard's eye. "I
don't think any of them are true."

 
          
 
"Why?"

 
          
 
He took her other hand and floated closer to
her in the warm water. "Because none of the stories I've heard tell of a
purpose."

 
          
 
" ‘
A purpose.’"

 
          
 
"Why did Tarn Apo, or Napi, or Wakantanka
create the world, Willow? Think about all the stories you know. Wolf and Coyote
and death. What is the meaning of all this.
"
He gestured to the world around him. "Why did God do it? Why does
it work the way it does? But the most important question is: What is the reason
for the world? Does it have a purpose? That's what I want to know."

 
          
 
She matched his smile with her own. "That
is why I would seek Tarn Apo. I'm tired of believing things because the people
tell you that's the way it is."

 
          
 
Her spirit felt ready to burst. She had never
dared speak these questions aloud. Now, here, so far from her mountains, she'd
found a man who understood. They floated closer together, the hot sun beating
down to sparkle off the water.

 
          
 
Perhaps he read the glow in her eyes, for his
muscles tightened as he held her hands. Honeyed sensations began to stir deep
within her, born through her blood by each beat of her heart. The parting of
his lips, the pulsing veins in his neck, betrayed his growing want.

 
          
 
His hand rose to stroke the side of her face,
his touch gentle. She closed her eyes, images shifting and whirling within her.

 
          
 
Her arms went around him as they drifted
together.

 
          
 
"Willow?" he whispered as their
bodies touched.

 
          
 
She savored the sensations as her breasts
pressed against his chest. She traced the muscles of his back and felt him
shudder. His hardened penis slipped along the curve of her hip as his hand slid
over her buttock.

 
          
 
"We've got to stop," he whispered,
as if in pain.

 
          
 
"Yes." But she held him for a
moment, savoring his male hardness before she turned him loose. She climbed to
her feet and splashed the sand from her skin. She raised her face to the sun,
letting the sexual tension drain away like the water running down her skin.

 
          
 
When he stood, he staggered like a wounded
man, taut penis bobbing.

 
          
 
"It would be very easy, Ritshard."
She tilted her head, twisting her hair into a rope to wring the water out.

 
          
 
Large-eyed, he nodded. "I guess now you
know why men and women shouldn't take baths together."

 
          
 
Her laughter bubbled up. "It might have
happened anyway, Ritshard. I spend too much time dreaming of you as it
is." And the dreams would haunt her with greater intensity now, fulfilling
in fantasy what they had so narrowly avoided in fact.

 
          
 
"
And I you," he replied sadly, reluctant gaze tracing the curve of
her breasts, the flat lines of her belly, and the length of her legs. "God
in Heaven, Willow, you're beautiful."

 
          
 
"You have your ways, Ritshard . . . and I
have mine." She glanced at him from the corner of her eye. "And I am
going away soon. It is better that we do not join in that way."

 
          
 
He nodded distantly, staring at something invisible
in the water.

 
          
 
She turned then, wading through the shallows
to her dress. On the sand, she used her hands to wipe the last droplets from
her skin, and reached for her dress. As she washed it, she glanced at him.

 
          
 
He stood motionless, calf-deep in the clear
eddies of the stream. His hands were clenched at his sides, and the long
muscles in his arms flexed. Water had slicked the brown hair on his white legs
and chest and beaded like dewdrops in the kinky hair around his softening
penis.

 
          
 
Don't even think it, Willow. Coupling with
Ritshard would only bring you heartbreak. Resolute, she pulled on her damp
dress and moccasins before picking up her war club and beginning the climb back
to camp.

 
          
 
"Reckon I seen whipped puppies what
looked a heap more pert than ye do, Dick." Travis gave Richard a sidelong
glance as they rode their splashing horses across the gravel-bottomed Cheyenne
River.

 
          
 
Everything had come undone. Laura, oh Laura,
what have I done? All those vows of chastity, the promises he'd made himself
and her had come so close to disaster that day at the Grand Detour. He'd been
torturing himself ever since, trying to find his way—but nothing rational
remained to him.

 
          
 
Blessed God, I’m totally lost. Nothing makes
sense anymore. That magnificent clarity with which he'd once viewed the world
was gone, and a maelstrom of confusion was unleashed in its place.

 
          
 
Richard concentrated on not losing his seat as
his white mare climbed the steep bank in buck jumps. Shouldering through the
brush, the mare trotted out onto the cottonwood flats beyond. A series of
sculptured bluffs—weathered, scalloped, and grass-covered—rose in the distance.
Here, the
Missouri
had cut deeply into the plains, and the
valley slopes were speckled with oak, cedar, and patches of buffaloberry.

 
          
 
Richard watched Travis lead the horses
alongside, and gave the scar-faced hunter a sour glare.

 
          
 
"Wal?" Travis asked mildly. "Ye
gonna tell this coon why Willow and ye are looking so sad? Hell, fer the past
three days, the both of ye've been so damned careful to keep from saying
anything, or looking at each other, that Baptiste and me, we're getting a mite
fidgety."

 
          
 
Richard snorted as he tried to slouch in the
saddle the way Travis did. "I should have gone ahead and jabbed you in the
eyes during our fighting session this morning. Maybe it would have kept you
from seeing more than what's there."

 
          
 
He kicked his mare into the lead, trotting the
animal across the flats. For a while they rode in silence.

 
          
 
"Thar's another old Ree village over
yonder," Travis said, pointing. "Sioux massacred a big bunch of 'em
about twenty years back. Chopped the dead into pieces and scattered 'em. Even
the wimmen and kids. The stories say the survivors were too horrified to
return. They just left the corpses for the coyotes and the Sioux."

 
          
 
"Why women and children?" Richard
shook his head.

 
          
 
"Wanted ter teach the Rees a
lesson,"

 
          
 
"A lesson? They call butchery like that a
lesson?"

 
          
 
"Ye ever read yer Bible? They's butchery
akin ter that all through the Bible. And God's work, too. I reckon Sioux just
ain't civilized like them Hebrew folks." Travis paused. "I'm kinda
surprised we ain't run into more of them coons. This hyar's the middle of their
country now."

 
          
 
"And the Rees? Will they be around?"

 
          
 
"Reckon they sneak through here when they
have the notion. All this country used to belong to them. Funny people, the
Rees. Related to Pawnee, but twice as cussed unpredictable."

 
          
 
"Indeed. Well, we've had enough trouble
with Pawnee," Richard muttered. Before the whiskey trip with Half Man,
life had been so simple. He could just hate, fume, and plot his escape.

 
          
 
Travis continued to watch him with eyes that
sliced past all Richard's defenses. Just like Willow, he can read my soul.

 
          
 
"I reckon if'n I's ye, I'd tie up with
that gal, Dick."

 
          
 
Richard tightened his grip on the wrist of the
Hawken.
"
I don't know what
you're talking about."

 
          
 
" 'Course ye do. We're talking about
Willow and ye."

 
          
 
'There's nothing to talk about."

 
          
 
"Uh-huh."

 
          
 
"There isn't!" Richard glared at his
tormentor.

 
          
 
Travis Hartman had an unnatural eloquence of
facial expression. Just a slight lift of a ruined eyebrow, the quirk of the
lips, and a tightening of the eyes that declared, "Yer a miserable damned
liar."

 
          
 
Richard surrendered. "It won't work,
Travis. I know it, and she knows it."

 
          
 
"Knows what, fer God's sake? Hell, coon,
if n she's a-looking at me with them fawn-warm eyes, I'd slip her straight off
inta the bushes. Then I'd be right tempted to hightail my cussed butt off ter
the Snake lands and never look back."

 
          
 
"You would." Richard shook his head.
"And then into another Sioux woman's bed, and then a Ree's, and Crow's,
and whoever's next would be next."

 
          
 
"Something wrong with that?"
Travis's voice lowered menacingly.

 
          
 
Richard cocked his head. "No. It's your
way is all, Travis. It's not mine. I want more."

 
          
 
"Like a nice wife? One of them white
'ladies'? The ones that talk about tea, and Mrs. Snootbutt's cookies, and lace?
Hell, I been a fool fer years dreaming about finding me a white wife, of being
all them things a man's supposed ter be. It's shit, Dick. Can ye see this coon
living on a farm someplace back in the settlements? Gee-hawing a damn mule on a
plow line? Smoking up a cabin and shucking corn? Naw, coon, that don't shine,
not to this hyar child. But nigh onto twenty years now, I been a-believing
it."