Mary Connealy (73 page)

She slipped down a branch to see better into the woods and realized her legs barely worked. They were stiff and numb from sitting so long in the treetop. She saw nothing and heard nothing, so with considerable struggle due to numb legs and arms still with cold, Belle climbed lower, her eyes shifting between that blood-soaked buffalo coat and the surrounding forest.

She was to the point of climbing down to the ground to snatch that coat and rush back up into the tree, when suddenly three of them lunged at her from the side, leaping nearly high enough to sink their teeth into her dangling leg.

She whirled, off balance, and fell backward out of the tree. Betsy cried out as they fell. Belle fired as she fell into the raging fangs, until her gun clicked on empty chambers. Taking a second to look for where the next danger would come, she saw three more wolves dead on the ground.

Belle reached for the bullets in her cartridge belt with fingers numb and uncooperative from the cold. A blood-chilling growl sounded from just behind her. She shoved a bullet home and tried to whirl from where she lay, but her feet and legs were useless. They were as dead as if she’d dragged stumps of wood along with her. Her arms were heavy and limp. Even her brain was murky and slow-acting, and she had a strange sense of not caring what happened to her, just wanting to sleep.

Betsy squirmed and cried, and that forced Belle to face the new danger and keep fighting, for Betsy’s sake if not her own. She turned and looked into the eyes of a pair of hungry wolves. She raised her gun with only one bullet.

A shot rang out and then another and a third. She blinked her eyes with aching slowness as both wolves slammed sideways with sharp whines of pain, twitching and dying.

Emma rode into the clearing with her rifle drawn and smoking.

“Thanks,” Belle said, her voice trembling with cold.

Emma looked around at the pile of dead wolves. “Figured when your horse came home alone you was havin’ trouble.” Emma always got calm in a crisis. Of anyone she knew, Belle would rather have her second daughter at hand when there was trouble. By the utter calm she saw in Emma now, she knew her girl was scared half to death.

Belle wasn’t yet ready to stand, but she saw her coat within reaching distance. She dragged her gnawed-up buffalo robe out from under the corpse of a wolf and, ignoring the soaked-in blood, pulled it on over herself and Betsy. Belle tied the coat around her clumsily and started shivering so hard she had trouble sitting upright.

Emma dismounted and led the extra horse she’d brought along over to Belle. “Let me take Betsy. It’s warmer inside my coat.”

Belle nodded soundlessly and opened her coat to pass the bundled-up baby over, carrier and all.

Emma hooked her sister onto her chest, inside her own heavy coat. Then she boosted her mother to her feet and, doing almost all the work herself, hoisted Belle onto the spare horse. Emma found Belle’s second glove and, like she was dressing a child, put it on Belle’s hand. Emma steadied Belle on the saddle, took the reins, swung up on her own mount, and headed out, leading Belle’s horse.

Silas and Sarah charged out of the woods before they’d gotten out of the clearing.

Silas had his gun drawn. The minute he caught sight of them, he yelled, “I heard wolves. Where are they?”

Emma said in her too-calm voice, “Dead.” She nodded her head toward the tree in the center of the clearing.

Silas turned toward the tree.

S
ilas took one look at the carnage. Death and blood and violence filled the clearing.

He spurred his horse toward his shivering wife, where she sat slumped forward on her horse. “Belle! Where are you hurt? Where’s Betsy?” He lifted Belle off her saddle onto his.

“I’ve got the baby, Silas,” Emma said, using his name instead of Pa so calmly Silas wanted to shake her.

Maybe later. Now he pulled Belle’s shredded, blood-soaked coat open, expecting to see her covered with bites and claw marks. He couldn’t see a one.

He’d heard the wolves baying. Heard the repeated gunshots as he and Sarah had raced in the direction of the commotion.

“I’m cold.” Belle pulled her coat closed and said with chattering teeth, “Give me back my coat.”

He rode over to the tree, carrying Belle across his lap, and started to shiver himself. He counted until his mind couldn’t take in the number. Then he looked down at Belle. Even in the moonlight he could see her skin was ashen and her lips were blue. There were streaks of blood on her face. “You’re hurt. Where are you hurt?”

“No, I’m fine. Just cold.”

Silas wiped the blood off her chin and held his hand up in front of her face in the moonlight clearing.

The blood was black on his hand, but she knew what it was. “Wolf blood.” She shivered and shrugged. “They never got me or Betsy. We were fine, just cold because they tore my coat off.”

“Tore!”
Silas started snarling himself.

“Your!”
He lifted Belle until she was sitting upright.

“Coat!”
Her nose was almost pressed against his.

“Off?”
His hands tightened on her shoulders.

“Tore it off?”
Silas checked himself and said with suppressed violence, “Why were you out here? I
told
you to leave this for me.”

His voice kept getting louder as he thought of how close she’d come to being killed. “And by yourself? You didn’t even take one of the girls? You’re hours late! We thought you were—” Fury clamped his throat shut.

Her pale skin and the tremors that vibrated through her kept him from shaking her until her bones rattled or her brain started working—whichever came first. He bet on the rattling bones, because he had no doubt her brain wouldn’t come through for him.

“Silas, you came for me.” She said it through a fog, and Silas realized she was dropping off to sleep. She wasn’t falling asleep. No matter how tired a person was, no matter what they’d been through, they didn’t nod off when someone was shouting right in their face. She was losing consciousness.

He felt the iciness of her skin and saw the blue tinge of her lips, and he forgot about being mad. Well, he didn’t forget. He just decided he’d leave it until later.

He’d lived in the high country off and on most of his life, so he knew a hard chill getting a grip on a person could kill. He pulled off her buffalo coat, ignoring her soft cry of protest as she tried to keep it around her. He opened his own coat and his shirt, then unbuttoned hers and pressed her chest against his, separated only by his underwear and her chemise. He pulled off her gloves and tucked her hands between their bodies and shivered himself from the lifeless cold of her fingers. Then he wrapped his own sturdy sheepskin coat around both of them and wrapped Belle’s buffalo robe over the top, flinching from the wetness and the smell of blood but using it anyway because Belle needed it.

His horse danced sideways at the unaccustomed activity of two riders on his back.

Emma rode up to hold the horse steady.

“We can’t take her all the way home. She’s too cold.” He looked up at Emma who was studying Belle with a deep furrow of worry between her brows. “How’s the baby?”

“Betsy’s fine.” Emma’s hand crossed her chest to hug the completely covered baby. “Ma kept her bundled up.”

Trust Belle to protect her children even in the middle of this madness.

Belle started shivering again. Silas couldn’t pay attention to Belle’s feet on horseback. They might be dangerously frozen by the time he got Belle home. “Scout out a sheltered spot, Emma. Get a fire started. We’ve got to get your ma warmed up.”

Emma’s eyes flickered between Silas and her ma. For one long second she hesitated, as if judging for herself if Silas really meant to help.

He kept from yelling by clamping his teeth together hard.

Finally, she turned and headed up the trail toward home with Sarah following.

Silas covered Belle more carefully then rode after his daughters.

When he caught up to Emma, she had sparked a handful of twigs into flame, and Sarah was dragging in a big dead pine branch. Silas knew they’d have a fire big enough to scare off every wolf in the Rockies before long. Emma had chosen wisely as Silas had expected. She’d built a fire a few feet out from an overhanging cliff so the wall was warmed along with the ground between the fire and the wall. The curve of the rock sheltered them from the wind, and the fire was reflected off the rock until it was warmer than the dilapidated cabin they lived in. But the perfect little niche in the rock wasn’t large enough for all of them. Sarah threw the dead branch on the flames, and the flames licked and caught and spread.

“We have to find somewhere we can all squeeze in, Emma.” Silas was getting worried about Belle’s unresponsive state. He swung off his horse and settled Belle on the ground between the roaring fire and the overhang while Emma tied up his horse and Belle’s. “No, don’t hitch my horse. You keep your ma here. I’ll go find somewhere big enough for all of us.”

Sarah added another armful of wood.

“No, Silas. I picked this on purpose. It’ll heat up fast. Sarah, Betsy, and I are fine. We can make the ride home easy. I can feed Betsy cow’s milk for one night.”

He’d been called Silas again. This time by his Emma, the one who seemed to love him the most deeply. They’d all turned on him. He should have known better than to try and make a place for himself in this man-hating household. Well, it wasn’t the first time he’d been a fool over a woman.

Emma began dragging a dead branch toward the fire, stopping to grab two more smaller bits of kindling as she worked.

“We’re wasting time talking. Get in here and start rubbing your ma’s arms and legs. It’ll take hours for you to ride home, and I don’t want you out alone.”

Silas turned his attention to Belle. It took him a second to notice that the girls ignored his orders and kept working, building the fire.

He didn’t notice them again until Emma spoke. He looked over and saw her across from the now-roaring fire, sitting on her horse. “We’ll head in now.”

“Emma, I don’t want you riding these wolf-infested hills with Sarah and Betsy. We’re all staying.”

“I know this range better’n you, Silas. Having this place so close was pure good luck. There isn’t anything else like it anywhere around.” She stared at him suspiciously for a long moment, and Silas got the impression she was trying to decide whether to trust him with Belle’s life.

Finally, Emma said, “You can see to her if you want, but if you don’t want to do it, I will, and Sarah can get Betsy home.”

“Of course I’ll take care of her,” Silas exploded. “I want to take care of all of you.”

“I’m obliged for your help with Ma, Silas. I’ll leave her to you then. But I reckon we girls’ll be takin’ care of ourselves.” Emma clucked to her horse and rode down the trail with Sarah trailing after.

“Emma!” Fury almost blew the top of Silas’s head off. He surged to his feet. “You get back here right now!”

Emma and Sarah, with Betsy, rode on without a backward glance. They disappeared into the woods as he stood there raging at the empty night.

It was all he could do to stop himself from snagging the mane of his horse and riding those impudent young ladies down and dragging them back. Only Belle’s critical condition kept him from fetching Emma and turning her over his knee. Except he wasn’t sure he had the right to hand out a spanking to Emma. Yesterday he’d thought he was their pa, and he would have said he had the rights of any father. But today everything had changed. The blazing anger turned into hurt. He
wasn’t
their pa. He wasn’t
anything
around this place but another one of the husbands. And even though he’d been working his heart out for these women, they didn’t trust him to be different than any other man they’d known.

So, Belle kept the reins of the ranch in her hands, and Emma toiled along by her side, and Sarah kept the home fires burning, and none of them even minded much until something like tonight happened. Tonight they couldn’t help blaming him. Emma, like Sarah, held him responsible for Belle being out here half frozen and in danger from wolves. It hit him hard that, whatever his excuse, it didn’t matter, because they were right. It
was
his fault. He should have told them what he was up to. Fool that he was, he’d thought they trusted him. Just another mistake on his part.

He wanted to go after them. Beg them to forgive him. Beg them to love him again. But his wife was unconscious. She was in mortal danger from the vicious cold. He stared, bitterly ashamed, into the black, windswept night that sheltered treacherous trails and hungry wolves and fractious longhorns. The wilderness swallowed up his daughters.

With no choice, he turned his attention to Belle. He laid the buffalo robe on the ground for a bed then pulled Belle’s outer clothes off. She needed every ounce of heat the fire and his body could produce to warm her skin and prevent frostbite. He turned her so her back was toward the fire, being careful not to get her too close to the flames. Then he rubbed her arms and legs with so much vigor that she awoke slightly and swatted at him in protest.

“Let me sleep. I’m tired.” Although her eyes didn’t open and in her semiconscious state her words were slurred, her attitude was cantankerous. It lifted Silas’s heart to hear even that little bit of spirit.

As he massaged her arms and back, he studied her face. It was stark and white under her tan. Her lips were blue and pinched. He rubbed his hands over her strong, clever fingers, which lay lifeless in the flickering light of the fire. He turned back to her feet, which had him the most worried. It made Silas sick to think of people who’d lost toes, even a foot or leg, to frostbite. He hated to think of the horror Belle might go through if her feet were that badly frozen. He held her feet to his chest, hugging them in his arms to warm her ankles. Then, because they didn’t seem to be warming, he lifted his shirt and pressed the bottoms of her feet against his bare stomach. They were frigid and set a shudder of cold through him. He held her feet, edging a few inches closer to the fire.