Untamed (11 page)

Intent on only one thing, refusing to be a slave for either of these men, she let the plate slip through her fingers and shatter against the plank floor.

"Come on, Josie," said Daniel. "Anyone can wash dishes. At least give it a try."

He then made the mistake of reaching into the pile and handing her a second plate. Like the first, she let it fall through her fingers and smash against the floor.

"Josie—what the hell is wrong with you?"

"I will not be your slave," she said defiantly. "I'll never be anyone's slave again." With that, she ran past the two men and headlong into the storm.

After closing the door behind her, Long Belly cast a long glance Daniel's way and said, "Broken Dishes. I think we should name your woman Broken Dishes."

Daniel regarded the shattered crockery at his feet. "That sounds about right. Broken Dishes, it is."

"Forgive my bad judgment, brother." Long Belly limped to the counter, his leg dragging. "This gift has been worse than no gift at all. If it takes the rest of my life, l must—"

"Don't say it, you red-skinned son of a bitch. If you say that you owe me one more time, I swear, I'll throttle you till your eyeballs pop out."

Long Belly just smiled, promising nothing beyond the moment.

Hearing a familiar squeak, Daniel glanced up to see Sissy climbing down the stairs.

"What's all the commotion?" she asked, joining them near the stove.

Grumbling to himself, Daniel said, "Long Belly here was trying to teach Josie how to wash the dishes. She didn't take too kindly to the job."

"I don't mind washing no dishes." Glancing at the mess on the floor, Sissy dropped to her hands and knees and began picking up the fragments.

"You will not do this," said Long Belly. "And you will not wash dishes. You will think only of finding the buffalo's sleeping place again."

"I didn't find no sleeping place." Sissy sat back on her heels. "All's I did was fall in a hole."

Long Belly refused to believe this. "The buffalo spirit led you there."

She shook her great tumbleweed of hair. "If anything led me there, it was them big boots you gave me. That's why I tripped and fell in the first place."

"You are the keeper of the buffalo spirit," he stubbornly insisted.

In exasperation, Sissy looked to Daniel.

He leaned forward, resting more heavily on his crutches, and said to his brother-in-law, "If Buffalo Hair wants to wash the dishes, let her. I don't see how that can defile the precious spirit inside her anymore than you do when you take her to your bed."

Long Belly bristled. "That is different."

"Oh?" It wasn't often that Daniel actually backed the man into a corner. He rather relished the opportunity. "How do you figure that? If I remember correctly, the Cheyenne set a high store on keeping their women chaste outside of marriage."

"Buffalo Hair was not chaste when she first came to me, and she was not chaste with me before I realized she had the spirit in her." Proud of his logic, Long Belly went on to say, "If I do not touch this woman again, she will not become chaste again, so why should I deny myself her pleasure?"

Daniel laughed, impressed with his rapid rationalization of the situation.

Encouraged, Long Belly added yet another bit of logic. "Besides, Buffalo Hair is not a Cheyenne woman. She does not have to follow our customs."

"It seems like none of the women around here have to follow our customs," Daniel said in complete agreement. "Why do you suppose that is?"

Long Belly pondered this. "Ah, my friend, Broken Dishes is a very difficult woman, one who needs to be taught many lessons. Shall I go to the barn and beat her for you?"

The idea had merit. Thanks to Josie's conniption fit, Daniel was down to his last three plates. He hobbled over to the window, looked out on the raging storm, and said, "Thanks for the offer, brother, but I'm afraid beating a woman like that would only make her madder. She'd probably shoot us both in the head—on purpose."

Snow was blowing so thick outside, Daniel guessed it would be hard for a man to see his hand in front of his own face. The odds of Josie losing her way under such conditions and freezing to death seemed too likely to ignore.

Turning back to Long Belly, he said, "Maybe you ought to go out to the barn and check on Broken Dishes. She might have gotten lost the way that storm is blowing.''

"I will be happy to do this for you. I owe—" He stopped himself short of uttering the entire foul sentence. "I will be happy to do this for you."

"Thanks." Watching as Long Belly pulled on his coat, Daniel waited until he had started for the door before adding, "And brother? Be nice to the lady."

Chapter 7

She was lost.

She was hopelessly and frantically lost in a swirling flurry of snow so white, its glare was as blinding as the sun.

Josie wasn't new to this sort of weather. She knew full well the dangers of being lost in a blizzard. The Baum Ranch outside Miles City couldn't have been more than sixty miles to the north. Conditions there wouldn't be a whole lot different than what she was facing now. What did vary was the fact that had she been home, she'd have been able to make her way from the house to the barn easily. Here she was a newcomer, more easily disoriented than she ever would have imagined.

Pulling the hood of Daniel's jacket well around the sides of her face, Josie paused to get her bearings. How far had she run? Ten or fifteen feet? Since she couldn't see anything but white anyway, there was no sense exposing her eyes to the needle-like shards of snow. Josie kept her head down, changed her direction slightly, and used her right hand as a divining rod of sorts.

Her efforts were rewarded a moment later when her fingertips smashed into something solid. Feeling her way along the rough wooden planks until she came to a corner, Josie quickly discovered that she'd come across the wellhouse, a small building erected over an underground spring. Using its location as her guide, she followed the slight incline down from the back of the wellhouse, veering slightly to the right, and ran straight into the side of the barn, as she'd hoped.

Once she was inside the cavernous building and safe again, she leaned against a stall and let out a relieved sigh. The next time she lost her temper, Josie muttered to herself, she would go stand in a corner like any other recalcitrant child. Trying to relax, she inhaled, pulling in the warm scent of grain and alfalfa along with the clean, yeasty aroma of the animals themselves. In the chill of the frigid morning, she could see steam rising off the backs of the livestock and the trail of her own breath mingling with the animal heat in the frosty air. Her heartbeat back to normal, Josie went happily about feeding the horses, pausing to rub their noses and murmur silly greetings to each in turn, and then settled herself over the stool to milk the cow. She'd collected about a half a pail of milk with the promise of more to come when the barn door suddenly clattered open.

Glancing around the end of the stall, she saw Long Belly standing in the doorway, his hair and face framed in snow. In his hand he carried a big axe with feathers hanging off the handle.

Gripped with a very clear picture of who his intended victim must be, Josie leapt off the stool and ducked down in the stall. The cow, apparently unhappy about the fact that she hadn't finished the job, turned its big eyes on her and bellowed.

"Hush, please?" Josie whispered, grabbing the milk pail.

The cow, of course, didn't answer, but Long Belly did.

"Broken Dishes?" he shouted. "Is that you?"

That didn't make much sense—was he still going on about the plates she'd smashed?

"I come for you," the Indian said, his voice drawing closer.

Trembling in her hiding spot, it occurred to Josie that if she didn't take some kind of action, if she just sat there until the savage finally came across her, she would die like her father and brother had, a helpless victim waiting to be ravaged and scalped. Looking frantically around inside the stall, she couldn't find anything to use as a. weapon except the pail she held in her hand.

As Long Belly's shadow came into view, Josie leapt out of her hiding spot, swung the pail high over her head, and then brought it down as hard as she could on top of the Cheyenne's skull.

Long Belly groaned, milk running down his face and braids, then staggered backward and collapsed in the straw,

Josie didn't stick around long enough to find out if he was simply stunned, out cold, or even dead. She darted out of the barn and ran straight for the cabin.

When the door crashed open and an ashen-faced Josie dashed into the room, Daniel's first thought was that she'd crossed paths with one of the bears he'd warned her about. She wasted no time informing him that she'd come across an animal of a whole other kind.

"Daniel," she said, breathless. "Your brother-in-law followed me into the barn and tried to kill me."

"Kill you?" Daniel tried not to laugh, even though he was sure there must be some kind of joke corning next. "What did he do—sing?"

Josie's eyebrows drew together and held. "I'm serious. He came into the barn while I was milking the cow and went after me with his axe."

"After you?" Daniel exchanged a glance with Sissy, who looked troubled. "I sent Long Belly to the barn for you because I was afraid you might have gotten lost in the storm."

"Hah." She laughed, but there was no mirth in her expression. "How did you figure he was gonna save me with an axe?"

Daniel chuckled, understanding how she might have gotten the wrong idea. "Long Belly took the axe to split a few more logs because we're running low on firewood."

She thought about this a moment, then glanced at Sissy. "He really wasn't planning to kill me with that axe?"

Sissy shook her head. "It's like Daniel says. We thought you was lost."

Feeling like an idiot, Josie sighed heavily. "I sure thought different, especially since he was still going on about those damned dishes I broke."

"I don't know why Long Belly would care about the dishes," Daniel said. "They're mine."

She looked up, only mildly repentant. "Oh. Sorry."

He came a little closer, bearing some weight on his bad leg. Thanks to the job she'd done cleaning the infection from his wound, Josie figured Daniel wasn't but two, maybe three weeks away from being healed. That seemed payment enough for a couple of broken plates. Unless, of course, she'd managed to kill his brother-in-law—a definite possibility considering the fact that she'd pasted Long Belly so hard with that pail.

Assuming she hadn't out and out killed the savage, Josie knew that sooner or later he would return to the cabin. What then? Long Belly may not have had murder on his mind when he went to the barn, but he most surely would be thinking along those lines when set eyes on her again. And there would be no one to come to her rescue. There was no way that Daniel would be so quick to come to her defense once he realized that she'd been the one with murder on her mind.

"Where's the milk and eggs?" he asked, back to the subject of the barn.

"The...?" Josie slapped her forehead. "I was so frightened, I forgot all about my chores. Maybe Sissy can go after them."

Daniel glanced out the window and shook his head. "The way this storm is blowing, I think we'd better leave the outside chores to Long Belly for the time being. It's easy to get disoriented in a blizzard like this. I'm surprised you made it to the barn and back without getting lost."

Of course she had no intention of telling him now or ever that she'd done just that, but Josie used the opening to bring up a worrisome problem.

"Since things are so bad out there," she said hesitantly. "Maybe someone ought to go check on Long Belly—you know, to make sure he's all right."

"Check on Long Belly?" Daniel hooted a laugh.

"But what if he's fallen... or had an accident?"

"If he's fallen, he'll get up. As for an accident—" Daniel eyed her with suddenly suspicious eyes. "Is there something else I ought to know about?"

Wide-eyed, Josie felt her entire face tighten with feigned innocence. "No, no, it's just that anyone can have an accident in a barn full of tools and such."

Daniel kept corning at her until he'd trapped her between his body and the table: "Sissy," he said, never taking his eyes from Josie's face. "If you walk in a straight line from the porch, you can't help but run into the barn. Think you can manage to go out and check on Long Belly?"

''Sure."

Without so much as asking Josie's permission, Daniel spun her around and stripped his jacket off her shoulders. Then he handed it to Sissy, saying, "Wear this, and remember—a straight line,"

After she'd gone, Daniel spun Josie back around and turned his attention on her with particular interest in her apparel—the red satin robe. "What really happened out there in the barn?" he asked.

"Nothing." Time for a change of subject. No question about it. "You sure look nice this morning. Did you shave or something?"

Although Daniel didn't entirely lose his skeptical expression, he rubbed his jaw and nodded self-consciously. She'd meant to distract him, not herself, but suddenly all Josie could think about was his damp, clean hair and the expanse of smooth, swarthy skin from his forehead to his waistband. Now that she could see his entire face, she also noticed that he was far more handsome than she'd realized. She could almost forget about the Cheyenne blood thundering in his veins.