Mountain Rose (30 page)

thought, get to the stove before Granny did, otherwise who knew what concoction she'd cook up and place on the table. She bent over to remove her muddy work shoes, then lifted her head to listen. Faintly at first, then louder, sounded the awkward gallop of a horse. She stood up and peered at the hill to her right, then took an anxious step to the edge of the porch. It wasn't a horse approaching the cabin, but the Joneses' old mule. And astride its bare back, young Johnny was coaxing all the speed he could get from the animal.

"What's wrong, Johnny?" Raegan demanded when the pale-faced, wild-eyed teenager pulled the mule in at the foot of the porch. "Has something happened to one of the family?"

"No." Johnny slid to the ground. "Is Chase here, Miz Donlin'?"

"No, he's not, Johnny. I expect him any time though. Jamie's down by the river. Can he help you?"

Johnny nodded distractedly and started loping toward the sound of Jamie's and Star's laughter as the pair walked toward the cabin. Then, mid-way to the couple, Raegan called out, "Chase is riding in now."

Before Chase pulled the stallion in, Johnny was running alongside the mount. "Good Lord, boy, what's wrong?" Chase asked anxiously as he dismounted.

"Roscoe is back!" the words came between pants.

"What?" broke simultaneously from Chase's and Raegan's lips. "Are you sure?"

"I'm dead sure. I saw him plain as day, sneakin' along the river. Maw saw him too. She sent me over to tell you."

Chase swung back into the saddle. "I'm goin' back to the village to round up the men," he said just as Jamie and Star hurried up. He looked at his young friend and said, "Raegan will explain everything to you."

"You be careful, Chase," Raegan ordered in a trembling voice. "You know what a back-shooting snake Roscoe is."

Chase leaned down and kissed her hard on the mouth. "Don't worry, honey, the likes of that one won't get the best of me." As he turned the stallion back toward the hill he had just descended, he said to Johnny, "You go on back home, son, and keep an eye out for the Tillamooks. With luck, this means we're comin' to an end of our troubles with them. Once we get our hands on Roscoe, he's gonna tell them the truth."

Raegan remained on the porch until Chase disappeared over the other side of the hill. She whispered a prayer that he would be all right and that Roscoe would be taken. How wonderful it would be to go to bed at night without the fear of having their cabin burned around them!

His feet crunching on leaves was the only sound in the night as Roscoe nervously made his way through the forest. A moonlit evening had settled in a couple of hours ago, but he was cautious about where he would sleep. He finally came to what he had been searching for—a wind-fall. A large tree that some storm had felled, its bare branches resting on the forest floor, formed a shelter for man or beast.

Tired and hungry, he crawled beneath the heavy branches, scratching his face and neck on them as he squirmed around trying to make himself comfortable. When he was finally settled, he scooped a thick layer of leaves over his body. The night air was cold and he had no blankets.

Roscoe's luck had changed the day he went off and left the woman to die alone in the cave. His plans to reach the Platte, steal a boat, and row away had died within an hour of starting out. He had nearly walked into three Indians roasting strips of meat over a small fire. He had jumped behind a tree, his mouth gone dry with fear. When it appeared the men hadn't seen him, he carefully backed away until they were no longer in sight. He looked up at the sun, got his bearings, then started walking toward the Platte again.

But again Roscoe glimpsed the bronze, half-naked braves slipping through the forest and finally, in desperation, he'd laboriously climbed a tree and waited for darkness. And so it had gone for nearly three weeks; sometimes he hadn't covered more than a mile in one day. He lost weight from a diet of berries and roots, and his face was showing the strain of dodging the Tillamooks and thinking that he would never reach the river.

At last there came the day when he knew he wasn't too far from the Platte. Yesterday he had come upon the lesser branch of it, the one that flowed past the Donlin place before continuing on to the Indian village where he hoped to find a canoe.

As he closed his eyes in sleep now, Roscoe had a feeling that tomorrow would be a better day for him. Somehow he would elude the red heathens, find a means of traveling the river, and leave the Oregon hills behind for ever.

It was cold and still when Roscoe came awake, the sun just rising. He lay quietly for a few minutes, listening for the scuffing sound of moccasins. When he heard nothing but the skittering of small animals rustling the leaves, he crawled from under his shelter and struck out, his stomach growling from hunger.

His spirits became quite high as he stole through the forest and saw no sign of the Tillamooks or big Rafferty. He dreaded running into that one almost as much as he feared being taken by the Tillamooks.

Anxious sweat did bathe Roscoe's body once. The time he had to walk across a cleared patch of land only yards from the Jones cabin. He walked as fast as his weakened condition permitted, hoping that none of the Jones tribe would see him. He saw no one, heard no one cry out, and with a sigh of relief he re-entered the forest.

Finally he spotted smoke from several cooking fires lifting up among the trees. The Indian village was only yards away. It entered his mind to linger on the chance that a squaw might come his way. His carnal hunger almost equaled that of his belly. But common sense told him not to be a fool, that his biggest concern was to find a canoe and get the hell out of there.

It took Roscoe about five minutes to find a freshly made dugout sitting in the woods at the edge of the village. He lifted it lengthwise over his head and hurried away. Half an hour later, he reached the swiftly running Platte. The gravel grated as he pushed the canoe into the water, then heaved himself into it.

A satisfied look on his now skelton-like face, he picked up the paddle and dipped it into the water. Somewhere along the river he would find food—and a squaw.

The sun had disappeared, twilight had come and gone, and it was true night when Raegan, along with Jamie and Star, heard galloping hooves approaching the cabin. All three stood up from the seats where they had taken up a vigil right after supper. When Lobo didn't raise his ruff, they knew it was Chase coming in.

"Did you find the bastard?" Jamie asked as Chase climbed the two steps to the porch and dropped tiredly into the chair that Raegan had just vacated.

He shook his head. "The varmint got away. We never did see him, but we picked up his tracks by the Jones place. We followed them to Chief Wise Owl's village and saw where he had taken a canoe and gone on to the river."

"And there," Jamie grimly finished for him, "he launched the canoe and we don't know if he went downstream or up. A tried-and-true trick for someone on the run."

"That's about the size of it," Chase answered, then looked at Raegan. "I'm about starved, wife, did you save me any supper?"

Raegan took his hand and pulled him up. "You know I did," she said softly. "It's keeping warm on the stove."

The four of them trooped into the kitchen, stepping quietly so as not to awaken Granny and Boy. While Raegan filled a plate from various pots on the stove, Jamie asked with a frown, "You're not givin' up on Roscoe, are you, Chase?"

"Not a chance. As soon as it's daylight tomorrow, we're startin' after him. We intend to break up into two groups, one bunch of us goin' downriver, the other upriver. Whichever one of us finds where he's landed to make camp will continue to track him. Time is runnin' out for the fat one."

When Chase picked up his fork and dug into the plate of stew, Jamie announced, "I'll tend to Sampson, Chase, you look beat."

Chase was tired, and more worried than he had let on. What if the Tillamooks attacked the cabin while he was gone? He could be away for days. Could Jamie and the two girls hold them off? All three were crack shots, but there could be twenty or more warring braves swooping down on them.

He didn't make love to Raegan when they went to bed a short time later. He only held her close in his arms, praying that no harm would come to her, that they would grow old together.

Roscoe nosed the canoe onto the river bank shortly before sunset. As soon as he had pulled the birch-bark vessel onto the bank and dragged it behind some brush, he struck off through the forest hunting his supper. He could fire his rifle now. He was on the white man's side of the river and far enough downstream to be safe from the Tillamooks who roamed the woods around Big Pine.

Half an hour later, he had shot two squirrels. He hurried back to where he had stashed the canoe and gathered wood to start a fire. While it crackled and burned, he skinned and cleaned the small animals. In a short time, his mouth watered as he watched the meat roasting on the spit he had fashioned from the green wood of a willow, its juices dripping, making a splattering noise as it hit the red coals below.

The wild game was only half cooked when Roscoe could no longer deny his hunger. He jabbed his knife into the hind quarter of one small carcass and lifted it to his mouth. And though it burned his fingers and his lips, he sank his rotten teeth into the meat, tearing it from the bone like an animal. Soon only a small pile of bones remained. Rubbing his full belly, Roscoe let loose a belch that startled the birds roosting in nearby trees. He shivered as he walked to the river and knelt down to drink. Darkness was coming on and with it a cool breeze.

After relieving his bladder, he turned the canoe over on its side and crawled beneath it. Feeling safe for the first time in weeks, it was but moments before his rumbling snores were issuing into the night.

Daylight was just arriving when Roscoe awakened. He crawled from under his shelter, then dragged the craft to the river and stepped inside it. Dipping and pulling the paddle through the water, he was miles down the river when the men from the village began arriving at the Donlin cabin.

Chase came awake when Raegan's warm body stirred in his arms. He had an immediate arousal, and in the dawn's semi-light he pushed the blanket down around their waists and gazed at the perfection of her breasts, one flattened against his chest. He had been too tired last night to make love to her, but he was fully rested now and and looked forward to sliding between the silky smoothness of her legs and burying his aching stiffness deep inside her.

Bending his head, he took the free nipple into his mouth and slowly suckled it as his hand smoothed down her flat stomach, coming to rest on the curly triangle of hair nestled between her legs. Although still half asleep, Raegan instantly raised her hips to press against the finger that rubbed erotically on the small nub of her femininity. At the same time, her hand moved down to curl its fingers around the hard thickness that jabbed at her belly. A sound, almost like the purr of a cat, fluttered through her lips as she stroked that part of her husband that she knew would soon work its magic inside her.

After indulging in the sweet torture a few minutes, Chase raised his head from Raegan's breast, and she released his throbbing maleness as he sat up and reversed his position. As his mouth replaced the spot where his finger had previously teased, her mouth closed over that which she had just left off fondling.

This foreplay that always proceeded the coupling of their bodies was of short endurance. Both were too eager for release. When Chase climbed between Raegan's thighs, grasped her hips, and raised them to receive that first long thrust, she whispered. "Hurry, love, hurry." Her impassioned words made Chase swell all the more, and with a low groan he buried every long inch of himself inside her.

And as he rose and thrust, pumping inside her, she bucked her hips to meet his drives, thrashing her head back and forth from the pure pleasure of his smoothly sliding staff.

But both were holding back, wanting this joining of their bodies to last as long as they could restrain themselves. It could be days, possibly weeks, before they would know this mindless pleasure again.

However, the time came when Raegan could no longer bear the bliss, and Chase was sweating from the stress of keeping control of the juices that fought for release. When Raegan began to whimper, to beg softly, "Now, Chase," he braced his hands on either side of her head, and his elbows straight, he bucked furiously inside her.

When they reached the crest and soared off into space, their ecstatic cries awakened Granny in the room next to theirs. She opened one eye, grumbled, "It's a wonder that randy pair ain't killed each other yet," then turned over and went back to sleep.

Raegan had made Chase breakfast, and they were drinking their coffee when the men began to arrive. As they milled around outside, eager to get going, to find Roscoe and hand him over to the Tillamooks, Raegan laid a hand on Chase's.

"You will be careful, Chase." Her eyes were dark with worry. "I don't know what I'd do if you were taken away from me."

Chase stood up and pulled her into his arms. "Don't fret about me," he whispered in her hair. "It's you I'm worried about. Don't leave this cabin unless Jamie is with you, and then only if it's really necessary. I know what I would do if I should lose you. I'd go stark raving mad." With a long, hard kiss, he released her and left the cabin to join the waiting men. Raegan hurried to the window to watch them ride away, choking back a sob when, just before disappearing over a hill, Chase looked back and waved to her.

Raegan remained at the window, wondering how it would all end. Would the men find the man who had started it all? And what if they didn't? Would the Tillamooks wage an all-out war on the whites? She thought of her neighbors, who had become such good friends—Aggie and Ike and their two silly daughters; Granny Pearson; Sid and Ruthie; Rafferty; even the Jones tribe. And what about dear little Star, whom she loved like a sister? Should she be taken back to her cave until the unrest came to an end one way or the other?

All these thoughts were running through Raegan's mind when Star walked into the kitchen. "Boy is windin' up, Raegan," she said with a grin. "I think the little chief is hungry."

"And soaked besides," Raegan said ruefully.