The Lover (14 page)

The sound of horns clanking together rang out over the water and more men began shouting.

“Hey ya!! Hi yay,
cows!
”

“Somebody git a bullwhip!”

“Watch out, now, there's one goin' under!”

A high, shrill whistle rang out but the cattle in the middle paid no mind to any of the racket. Frantic for a firm footing, they were on top of each other, hooves and horns, and thousands of pounds. More cattle were being drawn into the maelstrom.

The men tried, but the horses weren't going into the melee and they honestly couldn't get room between the cows anyhow. The next specific thing Susanna saw in the confusion of white horns and spotted hides against dark water was Tolly, standing on his saddle now and stepping out onto the backs of the cattle that covered the river thick as moss.

More and more cattle were pouring off the bridge and into the river, it was becoming solid with thrashing bovine bodies. Tolly started walking on them toward the mill, his quirt in his hand.

Susanna watched him with a sinking heart.
What good would a quirt do? Those cattle would hardly even feel it in normal circumstances, and they were panicked now.

She looked ahead to see that the way was clear and then to the far shore for Eagle Jack. He might know what to do but, even on the ground, if cattle got to milling, it was next to impossible to break them up.

Eagle Jack was nowhere in sight. Maybe he was already back in the river, helping with the crossing on the upstream side.

“Oh, no! Hey, men, let's see if we can reach him…”

The general shout of dismay brought her around in the saddle. The wagon was moving even faster now and she leaned across her saddle horn to see as best she could.

Tolly was gone from the backs of the cattle. Vanished. The stricken looks on the remaining men told the tale. He had been sucked into the maelstrom.

Susanna's heart plummeted, too. She strained her eyes at the bawling, milling mass as if she would only look long enough, hard enough, she could bring Tolly to the surface again.

He couldn't survive that, could he? Nobody could. But if he were a very strong swimmer, he might dive underneath the cattle, mightn't he?

But was the water deep enough? Was there enough room for a man to move free of the cattle?

Her thoughts scrambled frantically while her blood pounded with a roar in her head. The wagon jerked against her rope and brought her back to herself.

She had a job to do and she'd better do it. They didn't need a second disaster on top of the first one.

But she couldn't actually do anything but watch the water now, the strongest river current that was running in the middle of the stream, now just ahead of the men pulling her chuck wagon. An incoherent shout from the men tore her eyes away from it and she lifted her head to see several of them staring at the opposite shore.

Eagle Jack was racing his horse along it, and at the sharp bend, he headed it out toward the water and sent it leaping into the river. A huge relief surged through her. Eagle Jack could save Tolly if he was still alive.

Susanna searched the surface of the river between her wagon and Eagle Jack, she scanned the churning water between her and the other shore, then she drew her gaze back nearer to settle on the strongest current again. A flash of blue caught her eye—Tolly was wearing a blue shirt—and then she realized a scattered glimpse of a pale hand.

The sight galvanized her in the saddle for the space of two heartbeats. “Here!” she screamed. “Over here!” She waved her hand high, then dropped it to point. “Here!”

She couldn't get another word out of her mind or out of her mouth and she couldn't get her rope loose from the wagon and she couldn't let Tolly go by because she was the only one who'd seen him. Eagle Jack was barely in the water on the other side of the river, and the men nearest her would only turn and stare.

So Susanna threw away the reins, kicked loose from her stirrups, grabbed a huge, ragged breath, and dived headfirst into the river, struggling for all she was worth against the dragging weight of her boots and the divided riding skirt she wore. Oh, if only she had put on a pair of Everett's breeches today as she had so many mornings!

She tried to think about that, she tried to think about anything at all except that Tolly had vanished again and she wasn't finding him. Maybe he'd gone up for air!

Struggling against the weight trying to hold her down, trying to
pull
her down to the bottom, she fought her way to the surface, broke it, and took air in in great, gasping breaths while she scraped her hair out of her eyes and looked around for Tolly.

No sign of him.

One more gasp and she let herself sink back down, forcing her eyes open, fighting panic so she could search.

There! The blue again.

She tucked her head down and began to swim
with the longest, strongest strokes she'd ever made. Images flashed across her mind of one miserable summer spent with her aunt on Spunky Mountain. That house had been such a hateful place and her aunt so lazy that she didn't care if Susanna did any work or not, so she'd spent her days in the creek, learning to swim.

Now she was glad of it. This must've been the reason for all that tormenting loneliness—now she could use that old amusement of hers to save a man's life.

She got to him, she actually got hold of the back of his collar. It was Tolly, and he was alive because his hand moved. His face was turned away. She had to get him some air and herself some air. She had to get to the surface, so she twisted her fingers into the cloth, twisted in the water to get his weight up and started upward as best she could.

It was the hardest fight of her life but she'd gone too far to turn back now. She was saving this man's life. She was not giving up because Susanna Copeland never gave up. That's how she had survived in her life.

She never gave up.

She would not give up now.

This man was going to have some air if it took her the rest of the evening.

Tolly was not going to die because she was not
going to let him. Sometimes in life, things happened anyhow, but sometimes a person let them happen.

This time she wouldn't. She would not let it happen that Tolly died because the stupid cows had started swimming in a circle.

The water wasn't all that deep, it wasn't all that far to the top of it, she was almost there. Almost. She was there.

Her head broke the surface and the rain pelted her face and ran into her open mouth that was gulping for air. Tolly. She had to get air for him.

Tugging on him with both hands, she realized she was using the last of her strength. Then Eagle Jack's voice in a panicked shout broke through her consciousness and she realized one more thing—a thrashing, wild-eyed steer was barreling downriver straight at her and Tolly, its horns already hooking.

She found a new strength she didn't know she had and started swimming again to get out of its way, dragging Tolly along. Susanna made it out of the current and past the steer's path but it hit Tolly with a sickening sound she would never forget. The force ripped him from her hand and turned her onto her back in the water.

Looking upstream.

The water was full of cattle coming at her, struggling, bawling, fighting the current. Her cat
tle. Scattered thick all over the river like enormous fish.

They had lost them. The men had lost control of the herd.

She had thought she could never lift her arms or move them anymore, but she turned onto her stomach and began to swim again, this time to try to save herself.

 

The sounds came to her from far away, fading in and out, but they were still loud, too loud for anything. The cattle bawled unmercifully. One bellowed so loud it made echoes come back from everywhere.

Men hollered and yelled.

“Grab the rope!”

“Heads up, boys, tend your wagon!”

Water was splashing, loud, too, in with clacking sounds and snorts, but she was safe.

All this noise was making her foot hurt, though. It was a hard, throbbing pain.

“Hey, here's Tolly.”

“Alive?”

There was no answer.

 

Susanna snuggled deeper into the blankets with the barest motion she could manage, so she wouldn't disturb the deliciously perfect dream she was in. It held her safe and warm and happy, with the fragrance of a sweet wood fire mixing
with Eagle Jack's scent and the call of a faraway night bird floating on the wind.

She could hear his heart beating, right against her ear. His arms held her there, her cheek against his chest and his arms loose and relaxed around her.

He was lying on his side, turned to her, snoring gently. Every time he did, his breath blew her hair. It lifted and then fell across her cheek, lifted and then fell, in rhythm with his low, rumbling sleep noises.

She snuggled a little closer into the warm curve of his body.

His arms tightened around her. The noises stopped. He kissed the top of her head.

Her eyes flew open. The dream was gone, yet Eagle Jack was still there.

“Susanna,” he said, “are you awake?”

“Yes.”

She didn't move.

Eagle Jack had been holding her while she slept. He had been sleeping beside her.

They both lay very still.

He didn't even breathe in her hair. She couldn't feel him breathe at all.

“Are you hurt?” he asked, at last.

Instantly, the wild mirage of images flooded her, mind and body. The horns clashing all over the water, the cattle coming down the river at her, the bellowing and bawling, Eagle Jack jumping
his horse into the river, a horse rearing, its rider sliding out of the saddle. And Tolly's pale hand underwater.

Dear God.

“Tolly?” she whispered.

“You have a cut in the side of your foot,” he said. “Maybe from a tossing horn, maybe from a sharp rock. Is there anything more?”

She did feel a vague throbbing pain in her right foot, now that he said that.

“Did you save me?”

“No, you saved yourself. You were out of the river before I could get to you.”

“I can't remember anything past the cattle coming at us and that steer barreling right into Tolly.”

“That's because you hit your head on a log in the slough.”

Then he did move. He took her in his big hands and turned her onto her side and lifted her a little so that they lay face-to-face. He did it gently, more gently than anyone had ever touched her in her whole life.

“I haven't made your poultice yet,” he said, “but I will as soon as I can get my hands on some antiphlogistine.”

She smiled, in spite of the tears gathering in the back of her throat.

“Don't bother,” she said. “I'll only throw it across the room.”

“Careful not to knock a hole in your tent,” he
said. “And you don't want the canvas smelling like that medicine all the time, either.”

“Eagle Jack,” she said, “I know Tolly died or you would've already answered my question.”

“I hated to tell you,” he said.

Her tears spilled over.

“I should've held on to him,” she said, with a sob. “I should've seen that steer coming. I should've swum faster.”

“You did more than most men would've done—or could've done,” he said. “They're all talking about it. You'll do to ride the river with, Susanna.”

“But I wanted to
save
him,” she cried. “It was useless. I did all that for
nothing.
I came so close…”

More and more tears, coming faster with every memory of that horrible afternoon, choked off her words.

Tenderly, he pushed her hair back from her face.

“You've got to get hold of yourself,” he said. “Listen to me, Susanna…”

She threw her arms around him and buried her face in the hollow of his neck.

“Hold me,” she said.

And Eagle Jack did.

F
acing each other, the length of her body fit even more perfectly against his than it had done back-to-front, spoon-fashion, and he wished he hadn't been so gallant as to wrap her in a separate quilt when he'd lain down beside her. But, with both of them naked while their clothes dried at the fire, what else could he do? He was a rounder, yes, he'd admit that in a minute, but he wasn't low-down, not the kind to take advantage of an unconscious woman.

Not even if she insisted on pretending to be his wife.

Now he wished he'd never been the one to strip off her wet things in the first place, but he'd had no choice. By the time he'd swum his horse back across the river with Susanna limp and unconscious in his arms and had finally found Maynell
and the wagons and the tent and the fire, Maynell had been far too busy treating the gash on Rod's head and trying—with what equipment she had left—to get hot coffee and jerky into the bellies of the men so they could be gathering cattle while they dried out from the river.

He could not have asked May to quit all that and get Susanna out of her clothes when, after all, everyone thought he was her husband, and there was no reason a husband couldn't do that. But he did wish he hadn't had to do it because, try as he would, he couldn't get the brief—he had tried, gallantly, to keep his glance averted—glimpse of her naked beauty out of his mind.

Which was a travesty and totally unworthy of him as a human being, considering the upset state she was in.

He cradled her head in one hand and pulled her closer with the other, caressing her back in circles. She was shaking all over, more than just trembling, clinging to him as if
this
were the moment she could drown.

As if he, and only he, could save her from this river of tears.

It made him feel helpless and all-powerful both at the same time.

“Poor Tolly,” she said, muttering the words against his neck, “he worked so hard on the bridge.”

Her lips moving against his skin stirred him, made him gather her even closer.

“He was always so cheerful,” she said. “He shouldn't have died.”

“Tolly was going up the trail,” he soothed. “He knew there'd be rivers to cross.”

She tilted her head back suddenly, to look at him. In the darkness of the tent, he couldn't see into her eyes, but he could see them flash.

“I don't care,” she cried. “I've spent five years learning how to be strong.”

Her vehemence surprised him.

So did the fact that she pulled away and scrambled to sit up. She pulled her quilt around her and sat looking down at him. He sat up, too.

“Everett always tried to make me think I couldn't live a month without him, but I have done
everything
and I have survived on my own.” A deep sob racked her but she wouldn't let it stop her. “I have even held on to my ranch,” she said, in a fierce tone he'd never heard before, “and I know now that I can take my own cattle up the trail. But I couldn't save Tolly.”

“Susanna, you're not God,” he said.

“I
know
that,” she cried, “but I had him in my hand! And he was good to me! He treated me like an equal. I should've been able to…”

The tears began again, in earnest.

He wanted to hold her again. He ached to take
her into his arms. He felt lonesome without her closeness.

He reached out to brush back her hair. Loose and wild, her hair was beautiful. Even here, with no light, it caught some moonlight through the wall of the tent.

“You did all you could,” he said. “It's ridiculous to blame yourself.”

She hit her knee with her fist.

“I saved myself, didn't I? Well, then, I should've held on to him…”

He touched her cheek, beneath the swinging curtain of her hair.

“This isn't like you,” he said. “Usually you're pretty sensible. Like when you hired me. You knew that you had to hire a man for your trail boss.”

“That
wasn't
sensible,” she said. “It was nothing but sheer, stupid necessity because nobody would work for me…”

He tried to look at her, but she hung her head and her hair swung down.

“‘
Now
I know I can take my own cattle up the trail,'” he said, quoting her. “Don't you agree that it was sensible to hire someone who'd been up the trail before? Isn't that the reason you think you know how to do it now?”

She looked up and tossed her hair back over her shoulder.

“Well, yes. And I
am
a sensible person.”

“I know you are,” he said.

“But I should've saved him,” she repeated stubbornly.

Eagle Jack wanted to shout his frustration. He wanted to grab her and kiss it away.

He wanted to hold her again and kiss all the words in the world away.

“This conversation's going nowhere,” he said roughly. “It's stupid. You nearly got
killed
trying to save Tolly.”

She began to cry again.

“I just…”

“It's a terrible thing when any man dies,” he said impatiently, “especially a good man. It unsettles us all. But you didn't even
know
Tolly.”

“That's not even the
point
,” she cried. “That's not it.”

“Then what is?
Why
are you blaming yourself for his death?”

She looked down again and shook her head.

“I just think that…”

The answer hit him then, coming together from the echoes in his head. Everett. Her ranch. She'd survived. On her own.

He thought about that for a minute.

“Susanna,” he said softly.

She turned her face up to his.

“You can still survive on your own,” he said.

“You swam to the bank and saved yourself. No matter whatever happens, you can survive as long as you believe you can.”

He leaned to her and cradled her face in his hands. “You just can't work miracles, that's all.”

She made a tantalizing little sound, deep in her throat, like a cross between a laugh and a cry. “Oh, Eagle Jack,” she said, “you're such a comfort to me.”

When she threw her arms around his neck he was already kissing her, bending down to find her mouth with his, gathering her into his arms. He drew her onto his quilt and pulled hers around them with one hand, falling deeper and deeper back onto the grassy-smelling earth with her into the magical world of her bare skin against his.

Her warm, smooth body quivered against his, called to his, greeted his with the galloping drumming of her heart. And with the sweet, honeyed taste of her tongue.

Susanna's blood began a deep, vibrating rhythm in her veins that she had never known lived there before.

“Susanna,” he murmured, “sweet Susanna.”

The low, ringing tone of his voice stroked her body as surely as his hands were doing. It floated in the tent and wrapped around her like the smoke.

She let herself run her palms over Eagle Jack's
skin, as helpless to stop learning the rise and fall of his muscles and the strong, angled structure of his bones as she was to take her mouth away from his. His tongue, his lips, talked to her without words and she answered in the same ways, openhearted.

Then he pulled away, just far enough to speak.

“Susanna,” he said, “are you sure you want this? Do you know what you're doing?”

“Yes! I need you, Eagle Jack.”

He stroked her sides with his open hands, hands rough with calluses on the outside, yet gentle as a falling leaf. His thumbs brushing, barely brushing, her breasts, then his fingers warming her ribs and firmly caressing her hips, once and twice more, he seemed to be laying claim to her.

That's what she thought until his mouth left hers and his hands tangled in her hair and he began to plant a trail of kisses down her throat. Burning his brand onto her skin, it must be that, he was so deliberate about it.

Helpless, she arched her body up for more, her breasts begging for the touch of his hands, for the pleasure of his mouth, her whole self trembling beneath him. He trembled, too, then, and gave a great sigh of longing as he rose up above her, bending his head to take her distended nipple into his mouth.

She thrust her fingers into his hair and held
him there, she could not get enough of this closeness, this intimacy, this far-gone purest pleasure that she had ever felt. She would never move again because this, this was all she would ever want.

“Eagle Jack,” she murmured, “yes. Oh, yes.”

Her hands became voracious, wanting all of him, needing to explore every inch of him, demanding to claim him as he was claiming her. Dimly, a thought flashed that that might not be a good thing. Then it was gone.

Eagle Jack was hers and she was his.

This was right. She was more alive at that moment than she had ever been in her whole life before and that was true because she was with Eagle Jack. This was meant to be.

That was her last conscious thought. He moved his mouth to hers again, desperately, insistently, while his hands brought her breasts to ecstasy, and they went rushing headlong into the night.

His big body wrapped around her, his hands and mouth set fires intensely burning, and she was melting, flesh and bones, until she no longer had the strength or the sense to breathe. He slipped one of his long thighs between her own.

He gathered her to him, and held her closer than close before he pressed his mouth to her ear.

“I have to do this,” he said urgently, and then
buried his face in her hair, kissing the side of her neck and then lifting the mass of it to spread across the blanket beneath her head. “Your hair is like moonlight and sunshine,” he whispered. “The moon and the sun both let you wear some of their light.”

He leaned over her, on his elbows, to kiss her again. The hard peaks of her breasts brushed his harder chest.

She moaned.

“Eagle Jack…”

“Not yet,” he said, and planted a line of kisses down the side of her neck and over the curve of her shoulder.

It made her cry out. Her breasts needed his mouth, and her belly, and her thighs—they needed his hands.

“You're torturing me,” she said, and he smiled against her mouth and kissed it again.

Then he stopped and looked down at her. Dimly, she could see his smile.

Vaguely, somewhere in the far reaches of her mind, she realized that it was lighter in the tent. The moonlight was getting brighter because the moon had dropped lower in the sky. Morning would be here soon.

It didn't matter. Nothing mattered but that she was aching for him and reaching for him and he was teasing her.

She lifted her head and nipped his lower lip,
then she traced its shape with the tip of her tongue.

His mouth fell onto hers and devoured it, her hand took his and put it on her womanhood. He traced his own golden fire there.

“Eagle Jack,” she demanded.

He came into her as unerringly as that Grandfather Moon of his washed light over the land. They melded in that very same, sure and eternal way.

Susanna clung to him and buried her face in the hollow of his neck and moved with him to leave the earth itself. She wrapped herself tighter around him and they rose higher and higher to meet the moon in his path.

When it was over and they lay sated, gazing into each other's eyes, his leg thrown over hers as if to pin her to the earth again, she traced the line of his cheekbones with her thumb. She was cradling his cheek in her hand.

“The cattle drifted downriver,” she said. “Where are we, Eagle Jack?”

He smiled a slow, slow smile.

“Together.”

Her breath caught in her throat. Tears stung her eyes.

All she could do was drop a kiss into the hollow in the middle of his chest and smile back at him.

He gave a great sigh and gathered her to him and he held her while he began to drift off to
sleep. She felt his heartbeat slow beneath her ear and his breath go deeper and deeper as his body relaxed against hers. All but the iron bands of the muscles in his arms, because those never wavered. They folded her close to him and kept her there as if they'd never let her go.

They suffused her whole body with what felt like a golden glow, a warm safety that she'd dreamed of all her life. Everett had never held her like that.

Everett had never made love to her like that, either. He couldn't have done so, even if he'd known that such a different world existed.

Eagle Jack had held her and touched her and talked to her as if he loved her. It scared her to even think the word, but it was the only one that even came close to describing this new experience that he had given her. This must be what it was like when people really loved each other.

He'd certainly been hurting right along with her about Tolly. Not only that, but Eagle Jack had looked into her heart and seen the fear that she was keeping silent—the fear that she was weakening, that she wouldn't be able to survive on her own anymore.

It seemed to her that one person would nearly
have
to love the other in order to sense something like that. It was definitely true that he'd been interested in who she was, that he'd been observing
her and learning her personality all along, every day, or he'd never have known what else she was feeling.

But she shouldn't be thinking about love. She didn't want to think about love.

Loving someone, especially loving each other, brought on questions and decisions about the rest of people's lives and where they would live and it brought talk of marriage. She had her freedom now. She would never marry again.

Susanna smiled to herself. She didn't have to think about all that. She didn't have to think at all.

What she would do was close her mind to every future and past and just lie here and live in the present. Right now she would enjoy being safe and happy in Eagle Jack's arms.