Heart of a Dove (16 page)

“Lorie, you want down a spell?” Angus asked from my side of the wagon, and I nodded.

Angus helped me and the moment I was upon the ground, I realized I’d neglected to don my boots; the earth was prickly and rough beneath my feet and I experienced the distinct urge to cover my bare toes beneath my hem. I drank from the canteen that Angus passed to me as Malcolm leaped from the wagon with no assistance. All day we’d appeared to be traveling in the exact center of a flat circle; no matter the distance covered, we seemed unable to move from that particular position. It was slightly eerie, though just an illusion.

The prairies were vast, far more so than I could possibly imagine, despite the numerous stories I’d heard at Ginny’s concerning life on the trail. When I’d left Tennessee in the company of the Fosters I had ridden in a wagon, but the territory we’d covered had been different; we’d traveled primarily on established roads, with a variety of scenery. Here, the very air held a distinctly more wild feeling, as though the land and the sky knew just how very tiny and insignificant we were in comparison.

Whistler stepped closer to Malcolm and I heard Sawyer observe wryly, “Kid, you’ll step on a rock. Maybe then you’ll learn.”

“Aw,” Malcolm complained. Then he tattled, “Lorie ain’t wearing her boots neither, an’ nobody pesters her about it.”

Dammit, Malcolm
, I wanted to say, as Sawyer’s gaze flashed almost inadvertently to me, though he couldn’t see my feet from his position on the opposite side of the wagon. Again I wanted to hide my toes, feeling heat seep across my cheeks. Sawyer’s hat was hanging down his back for once, allowing me to see his eyes, which appeared just the faintest bit amused as he held my gaze in his. For as flax-gold as was his hair, he had very dark eyelashes. I turned away, just as Angus was observing, “I have that feeling in my bones, boys, that I used to get when bad weather was on the way.”

Boyd, who’d lit one of the rolls of tobacco that he kept in a saddlebag, said, “I was feelin’ the same, Gus. It’s a fair piece early for a twister in these parts though, ain’t it?”

“No, I’d say we were into that season already,” Sawyer said, and my eyes moved back to him as he spoke, then darted instantly away. He was no longer looking my direction anyway, instead out towards the western horizon, along with Angus and Boyd. Malcolm had found a long stick and was poking at something in the taller grass out beyond the trail. I hoped it wasn’t a snake. Sawyer said, “Whistler’s been skittish all afternoon,” as he stroked her neck. “Something’s not right in the air, that’s for certain.”

“We’ll keep watch,” Angus said. He caught sight of Malcolm and called, “Son, what’re you doing there?”

“A porcupine, maybe!” yelped Malcolm. He jabbed with his stick, jumping back as something rushed his ankles.

I gasped in fear. Sawyer, closest to the boy, dismounted in a blur and grabbed Malcolm around the waist, dragging him away.

Boyd whooped, “A badger! A big’un too!”

Malcolm thrashed, though he couldn’t break free from Sawyer’s arm around his waist.

“Lemme down!” he shouted. “I want to see it!”

“Hold still, you’re lucky you still have all of your toes,” Sawyer said calmly, depositing Malcolm on the ground close to me. Juniper nickered and stomped, while Whistler swished her tail as though to comment on all the fuss. Boyd, smoke clamped between his lips, was now poking at the creature with the same stick, like a little boy; the badger hissed, pressed almost flat to the earth in anger. Its black eyes glared fiercely at the torment.

Malcolm made as though to run back, stopped only by Angus’s firm grip on the back edge of his trousers. He said to the boy, “Malcolm, I don’t often insist, but you put on those boots.”

Malcolm was sullen, his lower lip close to protruding as he climbed nimbly aboard the wagon and made a show of donning his footwear.

“Lorie’s gotta too, then,” he said, as near to whining as I’d ever heard him. I bit back a smile.

“Fair’s fair,” I agreed, echoing my mother.

Malcolm leaned to hand me my shoes from the wagon, and I was relieved to see that his eyes were full of good-natured mischief again. Angus and Boyd were both examining the badger. Boyd had abandoned his stick, using the square toe of his boot to tap near its face, then laughing and hopping away as it snapped viciously at him. Malcolm leaped back to the earth, practically over my head, and ran to join them.

Sawyer was looking that way too, hands caught loosely on his lean hips. He was still standing near me and I was flooded with self-consciousness. I needed to be sitting to lace up my boots; at the very least, I’d have to pull up my skirt. Slogging with indecision, I leaned the small of my back against the wagon itself and tipped forward just as Sawyer turned back and regarded me with his steady gaze. Now that he was looking at me, my heart thrust out of control and I fumbled with my right boot.

“Blisters?” he surprised me by asking.

I nodded, quite unable to speak or look up at him. From the corner of my left eye he seemed to fill the space near me, mere feet away.

“We’ve a salve for that,” he said. “Remind me this evening.”

The others returned, having finally abandoned the poor badger. I still hadn’t managed to get one boot on one foot; I straightened and decided that if I was going to be riding on the wagon with Malcolm, my boots could wait. I was agitated, my fingers still trembling, but no one seemed inclined to notice. Sawyer had already climbed fluidly atop Whistler and circled her around, Boyd was teasing his brother and Angus was there to help me back onto the wagon seat. Once there, I drew my bare feet up under my skirt, hiding them from Malcolm’s view.

It was just after sunset, not quite yet dark, when Angus decided it was time to stop for the day. The clouds shredded apart as the afternoon waned, leaving a lovely sky as blue-gray as polished river rock. The river was visible to our right intermittently throughout the day; Angus chose a spot near it, better to fill our canteens and water the horses. Malcolm helped me down this time, though I thought that if allowed to simply wear trousers instead of a skirt, I could certainly climb up and down with no assistance. I was fairly nimble, after all. Perhaps, with trousers, I would even be allowed to ride one of the horses. Malcolm would surely let me borrow Aces; Whistler was out of the question, though she would have been my first choice. I watched surreptitiously as Sawyer walked her to the creek first thing, remembering how she had let me hug her neck last night. He bent his forearms over her back again, hunching his wide shoulders and ducking his head, then tilting it to either side, as though to ease a crick. For no more than a second, a flickering of a lightning flash, I imagined how Sawyer’s wide shoulders, his back, would feel beneath my hands.

Shocked at myself, I blinked and swallowed, turning immediately away, as Malcolm came bounding over and said, “This time we’ll set the tents up. You remember how they was laid out from this morning?”

I did, working companionably with him, wary of my bare feet in the grass. We had scarce finished when Boyd called over to me from the now-crackling fire, “Miss Blake, come learn to skin a deer.”

They were educating me, I realized, and though the thought of skinning a deer made me slightly nauseous, I knew it was a skill I should possess. My brothers had known, and hadn’t I spent all of my childhood longing to do everything they had? I made my way to Boyd, who rose and collected both a lantern and the carcass from the wagon, then led me to the creek.

“We’ll work down here,” he said, speaking around his smoke, setting the lantern on the damp bank and then retreating to drier ground to work. “You ever skinned a critter before, rabbit or squirrel, maybe?”

I shook my head, watching carefully as he knelt and laid the deer on its back; it wasn’t large, but appeared unwieldy to my eyes. I couldn’t imagine where to start. Boyd nodded for me join him and explained, “Well, you make the same cuts no matter the animal. I show you on this deer, you’ll be able to skin any ol’ creature, even a buffalo.”

I giggled and he grinned at me around his smoke, then exhaled a cloud through both nostrils, putting me in mind of Deirdre. He drew one long, last toke and then pulled it from his lips, grinding it into the earth before continuing his work.

“Now, I’ve already gutted this fella, which I’ll show you next time. Now we’ll just peel the hide to get at the meat.” He hauled the deer’s limp body near his knees and produced a long-bladed knife from his belt pouch. “See here, you make four cuts along the legs, on the front side, to the abdomen, like this. You can hack off the bottom joints, and I would, on a bigger critter. But we’ll leave ’em for now.” So saying, he worked efficiently, slicing the hide along each leg. At the fourth, he looked over to me, kneeling alongside him, and said, “You try this one.”

I inhaled, gathering courage, and accepted the knife, its handle warm from Boyd’s hand and a comforting, weighty heft in mine. Gingerly I took the limp leg Boyd held out to me into my left hand and tried my best to mimic his motions, wrapping my fingers around the lower joint and making a cut, away from my own body but towards its stomach. It wasn’t as difficult as I imagined, and Boyd said, “That’s right good, Lorie, now we’ll peel it away.”

I passed the knife back to him and observed, “You’ve never called me Lorie before.”

He chuckled and said, “My manners ain’t worth a damn no more, I’m sorry, Miss Blake. My mama would take a strap to me.”

“That’s just what Malcolm said about your mama,” I told him, continuing to watch as he worked swiftly, showing me how the deer’s hide slipped away from the muscle with just a few deft strokes of the knife to disconnect tissue, almost as easily as if Boyd was removing a coat. The flesh beneath was a slippery bluish-red and made my stomach twist before I swallowed away the gorge and concentrated on paying attention. I added, “I don’t mind. ‘Miss Blake’ sounds so formal.”

“Lorie it is, then,” he said agreeably, finished with the task. “Now, we’ve not the time to stretch the hide, not on the trail. We’ll send it down the creek for some other critter to find, how’s that?” So saying, he hefted the skin into the water and then turned back to the meat. In minutes he’d sliced it further, into cuts manageable for grilling over the fire. These I placed on a tin platter, which was clearly not going to be large enough.

“Boy, come grab this extra meat and get it on a spit!” Boyd called, and Malcolm ran over from the fire to do his bidding.

“There, you might like to wash your hands,” Boyd said as we finished and he chucked the deer’s head into the creek as well, before wiping the blade of his knife clean against his trousers. “You did good.”

“Thank you for showing me,” I told him, leaning to splash my hands through the icy water.

“My pleasure,” he said. “You a-coming?”

“I want to soak my feet a spell,” I told him.

“I’ll leave you the lantern,” he said.

Left relatively alone, I stood and lifted my hem just above my ankles, stepping into the clear coldness. It felt wonderful, though the blisters on my feet stung painfully. I peeked over my left shoulder towards the fire to see all of the men, plus Malcolm, gathered around it. Boyd was lighting a smoke, Angus kneeling, helping Malcolm adjust the iron spit, and Sawyer was standing, looking directly at me. He watched me for a moment before turning his head slightly away, as though perhaps wondering what I was doing down here, and I knew I would never have the nerve to remind him about the salve, as he’d mentioned earlier.

I remained in the water, stalling, and let my gaze wander to the sky, which was nearly enveloped in its black night-cloak, though smudges of reddish yellow still stained the far western edge. Stars spangled the expanse directly above, not a cloud in sight. Why, then, did the air have the feel of a storm? Certainly the men’s speculations earlier in the day, before the badger, had stuck in my mind. Surely there would be no rain this evening, from the look of the heavens.

“Lorie, come on!” Malcolm called then.

I wiped my feet one at a time on my skirt, then hurried up the slope of the creek bank to join them, my heart unexpectedly swelling with gladness. It seemed impossible that I had not known any of them a week ago. Less than that, I’d still been trapped in the living death that had been my existence at Ginny’s, never guessing that these four were headed into St. Louis and subsequently my life.

“Whatcha smiling about?” Malcolm asked, as I sank to his side on Aces’ saddle blanket, tucking my feet under my skirt.

I shook my head, suddenly self-conscious as everyone’s eyes moved to my face.

“Well, it’s right clear out,” Malcolm observed next, saving me from replying. “You-all was wrong about the storm.”

“This from the boy that almost got et up by a badger,” Boyd teased.

“I’m in mind of an evening much like this one, back home,” Angus said then, in his storyteller voice. All of them were hatless, seemingly relaxed, even Sawyer. He was on the left, as usual, and sitting as he always did. Though of course he wasn’t smiling, the expression in his eyes was fond as Angus continued speaking of the place they’d all been raised. “You boys recall the rope that swung out over Sutter’s Creek from the beech tree on the creek bank?”

They all nodded and I turned to watch Angus, whose gray eyes were fixed just above the fire as he saw a place far from here, in both space and time. He went on, “It was summertime long ago when my daddy hung that rope. I was ten, and all of you were still stars in your mamas’ eyes. Daddy hung it for me and my friend Hadley Chissum, whose daddy made the best corn liquor on the ridge, saving Bainbridge Carter.” Malcolm’s eyes twinkled proudly at this mention of his father. “Being boys of ten, we spent most of that summer daring each other to do something worse than the last time. Hadley dared me to meet him at the creek at midnight, on a night just like this one. You see, Lorie, there was the story about Sutter’s Creek, about the ghost of—”

“Mary Sutter!” Malcolm cried, unable to contain himself. “Crazy Mary Sutter who done hung herself from—”

“The beech tree by the creek!” Boyd supplied, deepening his voice to a growl. Malcolm and I laughed delightedly.