Untamed (43 page)

"Oh, you are so beautiful," he said, filling his eyes and heart with the woman he loved. "More beautiful than I even dared to dream you were."

Her breath was coming in little puffs by then, a sign Daniel knew well. His trousers were down around his ankles before she could even finish a surprised gasp. Then he went to her, kissing, fondling, and then finally filling each delicious inch of his wife's very responsive body. She came fast and she came hard, arching her back so rigidly, she nearly fell off the apple crate. Daniel had meant to prolong her pleasure and his, to luxuriate in the sensations and the intensity of the moment, but he convulsed on the heels of her climax in a mind-shuddering release, an explosion that almost took his feet right out from underneath him. His last lucid thought as he went over the edge was of heaven. And that he would never, for any reason, let go of the angel in his arms.

Later, after they'd cooled down a little, Josie lingered in Daniel's embrace, trading kisses and mindless words that were for him expressions of love. When he got around to pulling her dress down over her head and adjusting his own clothing, again he spotted the overturned can on the floor.

"What were you doing with the grain?" he asked, noting the bright red flush on Josie's cheeks as she smoothed her dress. "We're about out, you know."

"Oh, sorry. That was an accident." She dropped to her knees and began scraping the grain back into the container. "I was about to go check on Sweetpea and give her a treat, but I dropped the can when the baby—I dropped the can. Will you come have a look and see what you think of her?"

Daniel didn't miss how close she'd come to acknowledging their child, or the fact that even that special moment didn't take precedence over her damned buffalo. It seemed almost sacrilegious.

"How am I going to do that?" he snapped. "She pitches a fit if she so much as catches my scent."

"Hide behind the barn door, but please, have a look." Not even his sudden irritability could detract her from the beast. "She's acting really strange. Not only did she refuse to eat her hay this morning, but she started bullying the cattle as if she were trying to push them right out of the corral."

The three cows penned up with Sweetpea were due to calve soon. From what Daniel had seen so far, they and his shorthorn bull pretty much represented the last of his herd. Unwilling to take chances with those calves no matter how much Josie adored her stinky pet, Daniel not only accompanied her, but beat her to the back of the barn.

"If that buffalo is attacking my cattle," he warned, pushing the door open a crack. "We're going to have to get rid of her. Those cows are probably all I've got left of my herd."

Josie squeezed by him and looked out into the corral. The buffalo was grunting loudly and walking in circles at the far end of the pen. The cows were huddled together under the lean-to near the door.

"Sweetpea isn't attacking them," she said. "I'm going to go have a look at her. See what you think, okay?"

The moment Josie stepped into the corral, the buffalo stopped its aimless circling and raised its tail in anger. Then it charged.

"Josie—look out!" Daniel stepped into the corral and made a grab for her, but she ducked under his grasp.

"Get back out of sight," she shouted. "I'm all right, but you're making her nervous."

"Dammit, that beast will kill you."

"No, she won't. Trust me."

True to the confidence her mistress had in her, Sweetpea stopped several feet short of Josie, but stood there sniffing the air, pawing the ground, and grunting. The beast couldn't see Daniel by then because he was hiding in the shadows just inside the barn, but she sure as hell knew he was there.

Josie slowly looked over her shoulder and whispered out the side of her mouth, "See what I mean?"

Daniel grumbled to himself, hating the idea of his pregnant wife trapped in a corral with a half-crazed buffalo, but he studied the enraged beast anyway, looking for clues to her odd behavior. If, however, for one moment it looked as if Josie might be in danger, Daniel intended to keep her from harm if it meant he had to wrestle the beast with his bare hands.

As usual, Josie's presence had a calming influence on the buffalo. She walked right up to the animal, shaking the can of feed, and then petted its nose before offering a handful of grain. Sweetpea refused the offering, but allowed Josie to continue petting her and murmuring words of comfort.

Talking to Daniel now, she said, "I can't understand what's wrong. She won't even take the grain." Still talking, Josie slowly circled the beast, running her hands along its shaggy body as she went. "Maybe she's got a splinter or hurt herself somewhere. Do you see any signs of blood?"

Daniel knew better than to alert the buffalo by answering or questioning Josie unless he had some concrete facts, so he continued to watch quietly as she examined the beast. When she disappeared behind Sweetpea's slender rump, Josie suddenly popped right back out again.

"My God!" she said, her eyes huge. "She's dilated. She looks as if she's about to calve."

In his surprise, Daniel forgot himself and stepped into the corral. "That's impossible," was all he got out before the buffalo charged.

Ducking back inside the barn, Daniel managed to get the door closed a split second before a very lethal head crashed against it.

When he heard the animal moving away from the barn, he opened the door a crack and whispered to Josie, "See if you can get Sweetpea backed into a corner, then use that can of grain to lure my cows into the barn. If it's privacy she wants, it's privacy she'll get."

Again surprising Daniel with the ease with which she handled the situation, Josie herded her unusual pet to the far corner, where it immediately began to circle again. Then she quickly and quietly led the cows to the door, where Daniel stood at the ready. "Come on, girls," he urged, slapping their rumps to keep them moving. "You never know when your ugly friend out there will turn on you again."

"Be quiet, Daniel. She'll hear you." Josie clutched her throat and took several deep breaths. "I can hardly believe this is happening. I had no idea Sweetpea was pregnant beneath all that hair.''

"I'm not so sure you're right, Josie. How would she have gotten pregnant? We didn't see any signs of a bull buffalo before or after winter."

She hesitated, thinking about that, then suggested, "Maybe the bull got killed or something. shortly after he bred her. How long is a buffalo pregnant anyway?"

Daniel shrugged. "I don't know, maybe like cows, around nine months. What difference does that make? Sweetpea doesn't look any different than she did when she got here."

"But she does," Josie insisted. "Her fur is at least twice as thick as it was, and it hangs down to the ground. There's no way to tell what's been going on under there."

As if tired of listening to the argument over her condition, the great beast chose that moment to stop circling. Then she dropped to the ground. Without another word, Josie dashed out to where her precious pet lay. Moments later, Sweetpea gave birth.

From his vantage point so far away, Daniel couldn't quite see the new baby, but he did spot the glistening birth sack as it emerged. Stunned by the unexpected event, he got an even bigger shock when Josie exclaimed, "It's a girl, and she's almost as white as the snow."

While he'd never actually witnessed the birth of a buffalo, Daniel had seen enough bison calves to know that they usually had red or rusty tan fur that darkened as they aged. Thinking that Josie had confused the birth sack with the animal's fur, he sneaked out the front door, circled the barn on the upwind side of the corral, and quietly approached from Sweetpea's blind side. By then the new mother had risen and licked her calf clean. Clean enough, anyway, for him to see that the impossible had occurred—Sweetpea had given birth to a white buffalo.

Daniel fell to his knees in both wonder and utter disbelief, then whispered as if praying, "Dear God in heaven."

* * *

Within hours of the calf's birth, it was scampering around the corral on spindly legs and greedily sucking the rich milk Sweetpea was producing on its behalf. Two Moons and Bang had awakened and now stood outside the corral with their father, as awed as anyone. Josie barely had a chance to get over the surprise herself, much less the opportunity to relish the sheer miracle of owning a rare white buffalo, before Daniel had to go and spoil the celebration.

"You can't keep this to yourself, you know."

Misunderstanding at first, she said, "Oh, I suppose we'll have a few unexpected visitors. I don't mind as long as they behave themselves."

He shook his head. "I mean, I hope you aren't planning to keep both buffaloes all to yourself."

"Why not? Since I own the mother, I also own the offspring, don't I?"

"Legally, I suppose you do, but I'm talking about something a lot more important—the spiritual significance this will have for the Cheyenne nation."

Josie looked from Daniel to his boys, who were staring up at her in undisguised worship. She hadn't actually thought about what she would eventually do with the white buffalo, but she did know that it was already worth its weight in gold, especially when it came time to secure a loan for her ranch.

Gazing out on the ungainly calf, she said, "Just how important is a thing like this to the Cheyenne?"

Daniel paused to collect his thoughts. "They'll see this calf as an omen, something that will signify healing and a chance for their dreams and visions to return,"

"You mean they'll worship her or something like that?" He shrugged. "Something like that."

Josie returned her gaze to the white miracle staggering toward her mother's teats and suddenly became determined to keep the rare prize for herself. "In that case I don't see why the Cheyenne would expect me to turn her over to them. Can't the chiefs just come and visit her when they want to go into a trance? I won't mind."

Sighing heavily, Daniel said, "Let me put it another way, one you might understand better. This white buffalo isn't just some rare object that will make them hallucinate. To them, this will be like the second coming of Christ."

Chapter 26

The news traveled fast.

Within days, tribal elders from both the Cheyenne and the Crow nations showed up, many of them bearing gifts. A few tried to use their offerings as barter in securing the animal for their own tribe. All of them looked on the calf as nothing short of a miracle. Josie was quickly renamed Voestae, White Buffalo Calf Woman, and the ranch and its treasure became the scene of utter chaos.

Indians were all over the place, most of them chanting and praying, and tipis dotted the meadow where Daniel had hoped to be fattening up his cattle for market—a herd, thanks to the terrible winter, that numbered only three cows, two calves, and one bull. The cows and their young had rejoined Sweetpea and her baby in the corral. The third cow, due to have her young any day, had taken up temporary residence in the barn.

Josie was down at the swollen creek with Daniel and the twins washing all the bedding in the house when another surprise visitor approached on horseback, this one corning in from the east.

"Doing a little spring cleaning, are you?" he asked, climbing down from his mount.

"Caleb," Josie cried, dropping a soggy blanket in the creek and running to him. Hugging her brother close to her breast, she said, "I've missed you so much—what took you so long to come see me?"

"Been digging out from under that god-awful winter, I guess." He broke out of his sister's embrace and shook hands with Daniel, who'd approached. "We took a real beating down at the mission. How'd you folks do up here on the hill?"

Daniel blew out an exasperated sigh. "Like to froze to death a couple of times, and I lost most of my cattle, but we're doing all right."

Caleb nodded sagely, looking as if he'd aged several years since Josie had last seen him. 'There's dead cattle carcasses everywhere. Word is that ranchers in our area lost sixty percent or even more of their herds. A lot of them went out of business."

"Damn," said Daniel. "I knew other cattlemen must have suffered some, too, but I didn't know things were that bad."

"How bad can it be for you two?" asked Caleb, grinning like the young man she remembered. "I heard you went and got yourselves a white buffalo. Is it true?"

"It sure is," said Josie, linking arms with her brother. "Mind if we go to the corral so I can show him, Daniel?"

"Of course not." He shooed them away. "Go on and visit with each other for a while. The twins and I have this laundry situation under control, don't we, boys?"

Josie could hear the twins chipping away at their father in Cheyenne as she and Caleb walked away, undoubtedly scolding him for lining them up with even more "women's work" when they should be out playing in the sun instead.

When she and Caleb reached the corral, Josie gave him a full minute to gawk at the baby bison before she offered any commentary. Across the way, several chiefs decked out in feathered headdresses lurked near the tree line, straining to get a better view of the animal without upsetting its mother.