Widow Woman (7 page)

He wondered if she'd heard, in that crackling air between them, the whisper of his final thought...

Just the way I do.

At age thirteen, her first experience branding convinced Rachel that top ropers got the best of a hard job.

Ropers stayed on horseback, cutting out a calf, swinging a loop around its neck and leading or dragging it near the fire. The ones on the ground dealt with the close-up stench of branding and the blood of ear-notching and castrating.

So she'd set to making herself as good with a rope as she was with a horse, even learning the tricky figure eight of roping head and both front feet with a twisted loop. From her second roundup on, she'd never been afoot. She supposed she could wield a branding iron if she had to, but she'd as soon not have to.

Still, she acknowledged that night as she breathed in the sharp scents of sage and campfire and dipped her bandanna in the creek, staying on horseback didn't make her immune to the dust and sweat and smell. She'd washed before supper, but the water felt cool and cleansing as she wiped at her face and neck again.

She wouldn't feel truly clean until she could get full away from the men and take a good long bath with soap.

A sound made her pivot, still half-crouched. Nick stood on the slight rise a yard behind her, outlined by the distant glow of the fire and the faint remaining twilight. A haze of dust stirred by his boots surrounded him. For a moment of heart-hammering disorientation, he seemed to her a figure stepping out of an unearthly smoke, or the mists of ancient legends.

He's just a man.

He did not move as she slowly straightened. Then he took a single step forward.

She could see him now in earthy detail. His shirt and blue vest carried a diagonal smear of blood across one side, streaks of dirt and the seeping stain of sweat. Dust coated his boots, masking marks of less pleasant origin. Bearing nicks and scratches on their rawhide surface, chaps wrapped his legs and narrowed over his hips to buckle around his waist. She'd seen men in chaps past counting. For the first time she was aware of how they framed the area from waist to the juncture of his thighs.

She remembered the look of him there stark naked. The taut skin, the dark hair. The power.

She swallowed hard. Maybe she'd have been wiser keeping him a mythical figure.

"Ma'am. What're you doing here?” he asked, not quite a demand, but his low voice too rough to be polite.

At least he hadn't brought up the conversation from this afternoon. They'd avoided each other the rest of the day, and even at supper they'd found seats at the opposite sides of the gathering around the fire.

"Enjoying the evening air."

He ignored her sarcasm. “Is this where you disappear to every night?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"It gives the boys a chance to cut loose, without having a woman—and the owner—around.” Her own honesty surprised her.

He said nothing. After studying her face, a regard she forced herself to return, he nodded. That was it.

Irritation surfaced from her jumbled reactions. “What are you doing here?” she asked with prickly politeness.

"Enjoying the evening air,” he responded, deadpan.

The grin slipped loose before she could stop it. He didn't quite grin back, but the line of his mouth eased.

"You're a wise woman, Mrs. Terhune. That's why I left, too. They don't need a boss around, either."

"Shag's there,” she pointed out. “Whittling up a storm."

"He's one of them."

He said it evenly—a man who knew he was an outsider and accepted it. Because he'd always been an outsider.

Rachel didn't want to feel sympathy, but sympathy came regardless. She felt an ache she hadn't known before. An ache all the stronger because this man seemed to have no sense of his own pain.

"That's all right.” She forced gaiety into her voice. “Leaves all the more evening air for us to enjoy. Don't have to divide three ways, just two."

He regarded her for an unreadable moment, then tilted his head slightly, apparently accepting her shift in mood. “Wouldn't want to run out of air to enjoy."

"No, indeed. I used to worry about things like that as a child. Especially with the stars."

"Why stars?"

"My mama told me about how the stars in constellations came from all these old Greek and Roman gods, and I kept thinking if Orion decided to snatch his belt from the sky, we'd lose all those stars. Pa would point out the shooting stars, and I thought for certain we'd run out before too long."

Nick lifted his chin to survey the rapidly darkening sky. Rachel watched him briefly before doing the same.

"Doesn't look like tonight's sky's short of stars,” he said after a while.

She smiled up at the lights spattering the brushed satin sky. Clouds scudded across, causing the stars to wink and blink at them. “No, it doesn't."

"Your ma taught you about Greek gods and such, huh?"

"Mmm-hmm,” she confirmed, surveying the heavens. “She tried. My mind wandered. While Mama struggled to make me a lady, I wanted to be with Pa. She'd say I was an unnatural child, and she couldn't imagine how she'd come to have such a daughter. Then she'd laugh and hug me. She was from St. Louis and liked books and music. She never understood about being out in the open, with all this space, riding...” The memory of mischief brought a smile. “She especially didn't understand about my riding astride. Oh, how she hated that. As if I could rope from that sidesaddle rig. But I kept it to make her happy."

Kept it even now, years after her mother, grown more delicate each year, had not withstood her final effort to bear her husband another child. Theresa Phillips had been buried atop the big hill behind their house near the Platte River, where she had sat many hours by the tiny graves of four stillborn babes, looking east.

Rachel shook her head against the prick of sorrow and dropped her gaze from the sky to the man beside her, whose eyes met hers.

"I've never been anywhere bigger than Cheyenne, but Mama used to tell me of St. Louis. You said you'd been to San Francisco. What's it like?"

"Crowded."

"But the buildings, aren't they grand? And the people, what about the people?"

"There's more people, so there's more meanness."

"Oh.” Was she foolish to imagine a hurt beneath those flat words? “Well, I can't imagine being cooped up the way I hear folks are in cities, but it would be something to see buildings big as mountains, and people all dressed up like they show in those magazines. Men in their top hats and diamond studs and women—"

"In their pretty dresses.” So low were his words they almost seemed a whisper from her mind. She flicked a look at his face, then away. “Would you be satisfied just seeing them?"

"Yes,” she lied defiantly.

"Wouldn't be natural for a woman not to want pretty dresses."

She wasn't sure if he was mocking her foolish desire, truly reassuring her or teasing her about Wood's proposal this afternoon. Neither his voice not his expression gave her any certainty.

"When the choice is pretty dresses or another hand for the Circle T, I'd be a fool to take a dress,” she said tartly. “And I'd look a proper fool trying to rope a calf wearing anything but these work clothes.” She wished she hadn't said that. She was acutely aware of his gaze traveling slowly over her outfit, a survey she'd practically invited. Before he could comment, she hurried into the first topic to cross her mind.

"You have family, Nick? You never speak about your life."

He looked away. “A sister."

The brusque answer, his gruff voice clearly closed the subject as far as he was concerned.

His very rudeness reawakened the ache she'd felt for him earlier. He sounded so alone. Or perhaps she was simply feeling that way herself.

"I would have liked a sister. Someone to play with and tell my secrets to. Mama used to say I didn't really lack a brother or sister to play with, because I had Pa. He took me everywhere. Especially after ... after it was the two of us.” Determined to be cheerful, determined to distract him—and herself—she went on. “We covered every inch of this place even before we moved the outfit up here permanent. Why, we found places I don't think even the Indians knew. For as long as I could remember, he used to say we didn't so much own the land, as the land owned us. He taught me what that meant on those trips. How the land could own us."

She slanted a look at him, fearing she'd grown too sentimental. His shadowed face held no judgment, and grateful for that, she hurried on.

"Up-country, nearly into the mountains, we found a spring. And I remember telling him it was like something from one of Mama's stories about those gods. You practically expected a swan to appear out of nowhere to turn into a lovely maiden. It was a spring coming right out of a hole in a wall of solid rock. It's clear and cold and fresh. And it drops down into this pool that's just as clear. You can see the fish in it, you can see every rock. Right to the bottom. Why, if you'd been in that pool instead of Jasper Pond, I'd have seen from the start that you were—Oh!"

She gasped, robbed of air by her own words. By her memories of this man and the reactions they stirred.

"I didn't—I don't..."

She stepped back, too horrified to look at him. Intent only on escaping her embarrassment. After worrying what he might say, she'd been the one to betray the implicit silence—not once, but twice in one day. This afternoon she'd had cause, but now, with the night breeze whispering on their skin and clouds fading the night sky into velvet, she had no excuse for letting her words recall what she'd promised herself she'd forget.

She was an instant away from breaking and running. His hand shot out and grasped her wrist.

"Don't."

His voice rasped in the quiet. His hand was warm and rough and hard around her wrist. They stood, face-to-face, not a foot apart.

Embarrassment was gone. Rachel wasn't sure what she felt in its place.

She stared at him, feeling some of the same fascinated pull as in those moments by Jasper Pond. After a heartbeat, she realized that this near, her other senses joined in. She could feel the heat of his body, as if it had stored up the day's sun. She could smell the horse and smoke and less pleasant odors on him, but also something deeper, more stirring, that she couldn't identify. And she could see the details of his face. The harsh line of his jaw. The tic of a muscle beneath the skin of his bristled cheek. The glitter of his dark eyes.

He took a step toward her, the space between them a mere breath now.

And she waited.

Not sure what she waited for, certain she wouldn't move, wouldn't breathe until it happened. His grip on her wrist was bruisingly tight, but she didn't try to escape it. Just when she thought her lungs couldn't stand the burning another second, he released her wrist abruptly. A hiss of words came from his lips that she didn't understand. She thought they were in another language but she couldn't have sworn her understanding wasn't at fault.

"Go."

She understood that. His order was low, harsh, as he added:

"Run like you did that day at the pond."

She stood still, returning his glittering stare. Was she defying him or her own good sense? It didn't matter. She wasn't moving.

For an instant, something came into his eyes, and she thought...

Then it was gone, and instead, he spoke again in that harsh voice. “No? Then I will go, Mrs. Terhune."

He brushed past, not quite touching, striding into the dark in the opposite direction from camp. The night quickly absorbed the sound of his departure.

And still Rachel stood there, unable to make sense of him. Or of herself.

Nick rode for all the night watches, then worked through the day. By the time supper rolled around he was tired enough to begin understanding how a man could resort to the trail-drive trick of putting tobacco juice in his eyes—the sting was so fierce there was no closing your eyes, much less drifting off to sleep.

After all the long, punishing hours, it was his luck to take his plate of hot food from Fred and prop himself against the nearest wagon wheel, only to find Rachel Terhune not two feet away.

She had finished supper and was readjusting her hat for another couple of hours in the saddle as the shadows drew longer and longer until they blended into night. He wished to hell he didn't admire her determination. He wished to hell he didn't see the dark smudges and fine lines of weariness around her eyes before the shadow of the brim covered them.

And he truly wished to hell that he didn't see the purpling marks around her left wrist as she drew on her gloves. The marks that matched the span of his fingers digging into that smooth skin, wrapping around those delicate bones.

She looked up, meeting his gaze, and a fireball exploded in his gut.

He flung away the untouched food and spun away. In five minutes he'd found Shag. In ten, he'd arranged to take Davis and a couple other hands and start for a smaller branding camp up-country a ways. In twenty he was gone.

Sunset came earlier these evenings. The wind in the drying grass rustled a different song. And the mountains to the west drew their white caps lower over their peaks.

Nick watched the signs. Before much longer, they'd be making the fall roundup, gathering the beef herd and trailing it to a railhead for shipping to market. Then his time at the Circle T would end. He'd head to Texas for a herd, ready to start his own outfit. His temporary stop working for the widow woman would be done.

Staying clear of her these past weeks would make that easier.

"There,” he said, pointing. He'd picked out the gash on the flank of a rusty-colored steer even while his mind gnawed on other matters. “You take him."

Davis Andresson flicked a look at him. “With the both of us, it wouldn't take but a minute."

"If you're alone next time you spot an animal needing tending, you going to wait around for somebody else to show?"

"No."

Nick had taught Andresson a lot, but he hadn't needed any lesson in how an open wound drew blowflies in a swarm, or that when the blowflies set their screwworms, an animal could sicken and die in no time. Andresson, like every hand, carried sticky, pungent screwworm cure in his saddlebags. Daubing it on the wound kept the insects clear. The trick was getting the animal to take the cure.