“She is mad,” Daniel sneered, shaking his head. Who in their right mind made this much noise? She’s going to attract the entire Blackfoot nation with all that racket.
Chapter 5
Daniel stood in the doorframe of his cabin. His eyes narrowed as he watched Aimee lean into the hearth and stir the contents of the iron kettle. Whatever she had cooking in that pot made his mouth water anew. The air outside and within the cabin was permeated with delicious smells. Something inexplicable stirred within him as he stood, silently observing her. His insides warmed. He’d never experienced coming home from a day in the woods to a prepared meal, much less a feminine presence.
Aimee removed the spoon from the pot. In a dramatic voice she announced, “Well, dinner’s ready!” She turned, and let out a startled shriek. Her hand holding the long wooden spoon shot up in front of her in an apparent act of self-defense, splattering liquid onto her clothes. Daniel was suddenly glad it was a spoon and not a knife she was holding.
“Ohmigod! You almost gave me a heart attack!” She expelled a loud breath of air, and her hand grasped at her chest, then she lowered her spoon.
“If I had been a Blackfoot warrior, that ” – Daniel gestured at the spoon – “ wouldn’t be much of a weapon.” He tried hard to suppress a grin.
“What, you’re actually joking with me? I didn’t think you had it in you.”
“It wasn’t meant in jest,” Daniel said dryly. The hint of a smile left his face. “You make so much noise, I heard you a mile away. Anyone could walk up on you undetected.”
“Oh.” Aimee lowered her eyes. “Well, um . . . I made dinner.” She seemed to stumble over her words. “I wasn’t sure when you’d be back, and I found food supplies in these sacks. I hope it was okay to use some of it.”
“I already smelled your cooking from outside.” Daniel sensed her insecurity. Her quick action and recovery when she saw him in the doorway impressed him, even if her choice of weapon posed no real threat. He placed the rabbits he brought on the ground outside, propped his rifle next to the door, and removed his powder horn and traveling pouch.
Aimee turned, and reached for some wooden bowls and spoons from the shelf. “Are you gone all day a lot?” she asked.
“Most days,” he answered absently, still standing in the doorway. His eyes devoured her, and his gaze roamed over her backside, taking in her odd clothing. His pulse quickened at the sight of her form fitting shirt and britches that hugged every inch of her womanly curves. He clenched his jaw as he envisioned running his hands up and down the contours of her body, and burying his fingers in the long waves of her yellow hair that swayed seductively down her back with each of her movements. He had never seen a respectable white woman with loose hair before. He remembered the women in the east kept their hair tied up and covered at all times. Emma’s hair had always been hidden beneath one of those silly bonnets.
Is she aware at all of how beautiful she is?
“What do you do all day?” Aimee asked conversationally, putting a stop to his wandering mind.
“I run traps and scout for beaver,” Daniel answered. He watched her struggle with the heavy kettle hanging on the tripod over the fire. Moving quickly around the table, he reached for it, and pulled it off the hook.
Their eyes met, and he held her gaze for a moment. His stomach tightened. He moved the kettle away from the heat, and backed away to sit at the table. She ladled out a portion of stew into a bowl, and set it in front of him.
“You must be pretty hungry after being gone all day,” she said, and sat across from him.
Daniel forked a piece of meat from his bowl, and tasted it. He followed it up with a tender piece of root. “This is good,” he commented between mouthfuls. She’d prepared the meat and roots differently than what he was used to, but it had a pleasing taste. He ate in silence, and the woman sitting across from him thankfully didn’t try to engage him in more talk. He was aware of her nervous glances in his direction, but he felt no need for discussion. He emptied his bowl, and refilled it again.
When he was finished, he thanked her for the food and left the cabin.
The early evening sun cast a golden glow around the mountain beyond the river. Daniel took the rabbits he caught earlier to the fire pit and began the task of skinning and eviscerating. Aimee emerged from the cabin. She’d stopped to watch him before continuing on to the banks of the Madison. In a hasty decision, he set the rabbits aside and caught up with her, his hands covered in blood. Wordlessly, he took the heavy wooden bucket she carried, and set it down at the water’s edge.
“You don’t have to do that,” Aimee said. “I’m quite capable of pulling my own weight.”
“I wasn’t pulling you, I was carrying the bucket. Your foot will heal faster if you don’t move around on it so much.”
He reached for the bowls, and she hesitantly said, “Um . . . you should wash your hands first before you touch those bowls. I’d rather not catch salmonella or something next time I eat out of them.”
“There are no salmon in this river.” He wondered what cleaning the bowls had to do with catching fish.
“Never mind.” Aimee shook her head.
He washed his hands in the water, then dipped the bowls in and let the current rinse them out.
“You don’t have to do that,” Aimee repeated.
He shrugged. “I’m accustomed to doing for myself.” Finished with the task, he dipped the bucket in the water to fill it, and then carried it back to the cabin.
Just before reaching the door, he caught movement between the trees beyond the cabin. He turned his head slowly, and stared into the forest, his hand reaching instinctively for the knife at his belt. He took a protective step in front of the woman next to him. His hand relaxed on the knife handle a moment later. Elk Runner stepped from behind the trees. Daniel strode up to him, and the two clasped hands in a warm greeting. Ignoring the woman standing at his cabin door, he led his brother to the fire pit and offered him one of the rabbits.
He wasted no time, and asked, “What have you learned?”
Elk Runner skewered the meat and turned it over the fire, taking his time with a response. “Her trail begins in the meadow near the bubbling mud,” he finally said. “It is as if she fell out of the sky.”
Daniel recalled Aimee’s words from the day before. “I sort of dropped into the area.” He shrugged it off as ridiculous.
“Someone must have concealed their tracks,” Daniel pondered.
“Does she say where she comes from?”
“She claims to be from a big, white man’s city in the east, and she is running away from the man she is promised to marry,” Daniel said. “But it is difficult enough for a woman to travel from the east to St. Louis, and impossible up the Missouri to this area.”
“But yet she is here,” Elk Runner remarked. “Your own mother must have made the same journey.”
Daniel shook his head even though Elk Runner had a point. “My father accompanied her,” he argued.
“There are ways to make someone tell the truth,” Elk Runner suggested after a moment’s pause.
“No,” Daniel said quickly. “She has her reasons, and I will wait for her to tell me the truth when she is ready.”
Elk Runner grinned. “If she is promised to another man, how long will you wait to see if he comes for her?”
“I have no intention of keeping her,” he said in exasperation.
Elk Runner gave a hearty laugh. “Your eyes betray you, White Wolf. As sure as the sun comes up every morning, you want this woman,” he proclaimed.
“If I have to, I’ll wait until my father returns, then I will take her back to St. Louis myself before the first snow.” Daniel ignored his brother’s remark.
“You will not be able to stay out of her sleeping blankets that long,” Elk Runner predicted with confidence. “This woman has you bewitched. It is like I said before, perhaps the spirits brought her to you because they know a man should not live without a
woman.”
Daniel threw a stick in the fire, spraying glowing embers into the air. Elk Runner tore a piece of meat from his skewer, laughing.
*****
Aimee watched from the doorway. The two seemed to be having a heated discussion. They were talking in the Indian’s language, making it impossible for her to understand. The man seemed quite amused by some things, and whatever made him laugh visibly aggravated Daniel. She’d clearly been dismissed when the Indian showed up. Daniel hadn’t given her a second look. Tearing her eyes away from the men, she headed into the cabin. She might as well call it a day. With a heavy sigh, she removed her pants, and crawled into her bed of furs.
Aimee’s eyes focused on the dark ceiling above her as she lay on her back. Her thoughts strayed to the man outside who was such an enigma, and the intense feelings he evoked disturbed her. She had only known him for two days, but her attraction to him had been instant. His nearness and intense stare had sent her pulse racing, and the memory caused delicious tingling feelings in her gut. The entire room seemed to have shrunk earlier from his large and imposing frame. The purely masculine scent of him had enveloped her senses. He smelled of the forest – pine and clean earth, mixed with the scent of buckskin and wood smoke.
Her heart sped up at the memory, and butterflies fluttered in her stomach. Jeez! She’d never been affected like this in the presence of a man. She didn’t recall ever having such exhilarating, electrifying feelings before. Brad had definitely never evoked such an intense reaction from her. He had been all wrong for her, she realized now with greater clarity.
Brad Bigsby was a surgical resident, a city boy through and through, who wanted nothing to do with camping and the great outdoors. They had met shortly after she and her lifelong friend, Jana Evans, moved from New York to California after graduating nursing school together. He had pursued her relentlessly until she finally agreed to go out with him. His controlling ways hadn’t been immediately obvious.
After Brad’s marriage proposal three months ago, his overbearing attitude had gotten so bad, it bordered on abuse. Recalling their last heated argument a little over a week ago, she didn’t regret that she’d given back his ring and broken the engagement. He had told her in no uncertain terms that their relationship was not over, and she was glad she had found a reprieve for a while by being here.
Now I just have to find the courage to truly stand up to him when I return home.
Her next relationship would definitely be with someone with whom she could share the splendors of nature. Someone more the outdoorsy kind. Daniel’s face flashed before her eyes. If only someone like him existed in her time.
Chapter 6
The next couple of days passed uneventfully. Daniel was gone most of the time. Aimee spent the time tidying up in the cabin, which she jokingly referred to as the Nineteenth Century version of a bachelor pad. She organized the dishes after washing an inch of dirt off the shelves. The table took nearly an hour to scrub clean. She didn’t even want to know what all those little parts and pieces she scraped off the wood used to be. Most likely body parts of some animals that Zach and Daniel had butchered. The dirt floor would have to just stay the way it was. She could do nothing about that. She found a trunk under the bed Daniel had assigned to her that contained several homespun cotton shirts, a few buckskin shirts and pants, and various other articles of clothing Aimee couldn’t name. As she folded some of the shirts, she couldn’t resist holding one to her face, inhaling the strong woodsy scent she’d begun to associate with Daniel.
She also took long walks along the river as best as her foot allowed, and prepared a hot meal each afternoon for when Daniel returned home from whatever it was that he did during the day. He never commented about her cooking, but the pleased look on his face when he returned from his outings, and the way he ate the food she prepared with gusto told her he liked it. If he noticed the changes she’d made to the cabin’s interior, he didn’t mention it. Each morning when she woke, she found fresh berries, nuts and coffee on the table.
How can a big guy like that move so quietly? She contemplated the appearance of her breakfast each morning. She considered herself a fairly light sleeper, and the hinges on that cabin door weren’t exactly quiet. She knew that Daniel didn’t come inside the cabin to sleep at night.
Aimee stood in the doorway of the cabin one morning, sipping her coffee. It tasted much better, now that she had found some sugar. She sighed as she stared at the beautiful scenery of the rivers across the meadow, and the purple hued mountain in the backdrop. In stark contrast to her noisy condominium-lined neighborhood back home, this place was truly a slice of heaven.
She turned back into the cabin to check on her yeast starter, pleased with the many air bubbles forming in the flour. It might be ready for some bread baking later on. She sat on her bed, and unwrapped the bandage on her ankle. The swelling was mostly gone, and it only hurt when she put full weight on her foot. She might even be able to walk without her crutch today.
“Ugh, I really stink.” She tugged at the front of the shirt and sniffed. “I think I need to change clothes today and wash these.” She rummaged through her pack at the foot of the bed for a fresh pair of pants and shirt. Better yet, I need a good bath and scrubbing. The idea of bathing in the cold river wasn’t too enticing. Another thought entered her mind.
She knew that the Firehole River ran through several geyser basins south of here, and the hot water runoff from those geysers flowed into this river, making the water actually somewhat warm. Due to the peculiar topography of this region, the Firehole, as well as the Yellowstone, were two of the few rivers that flowed in a northerly direction.
Wasting no time, she grabbed a blanket off her bed, and placed her fresh change of clothes on it along with her shampoo and soap. She wrapped this all up and headed out the door. A quick look around confirmed that Daniel had once again disappeared for the day.
She felt a little self-conscious and vulnerable as she removed her clothes at the riverbank and stripped down to her bra and panties, but not enough to deter her from her plans. It wasn’t a whole lot different than wearing a bikini, she shrugged. With a quick intake of breath, she let herself drop off the riverbank, and gasped when she hit the frigid water. Grabbing for her bar of soap, she quickly lathered her arms and face. The thought of feeling clean again eased her self-consciousness of bathing in the open.
Rather than leave the water after shampooing her hair, she swam to the inlet of the Firehole. The current was surprisingly stronger than she had expected, but she let out a long sigh of contentment when the water became noticeably warmer. The river was very loud as the water rushed out of a narrow gorge in the mountain, tumbling over large boulders as it joined with the Gibbon.
Free and uninhibited, she splashed and laughed in the water, acting like a little kid at the water park. She’d had to grow up fast after a drunk driver claimed the lives of her parents not two months after her high school graduation. That had been five years ago, and life had become way too serious too quickly. Right here, in this moment in time, she felt free from responsibility, and it felt so good.
She tossed her inhibitions aside as she made a game of letting the current carry her downstream, then swam back upriver to do it again. “Woohoo!” she shouted and laughed. She suddenly remembered Daniel chastising her a few days ago for making too much noise. She shrugged it off. Here, the deafening roar of the water would surely drown out anything she yelled.
She was mistaken.
*****
Daniel had left before daylight to hunt fresh meat. His plans were to stay close to the cabin today. Several hours later, he dragged a white tail deer carcass back to camp. A piercing scream filled the air, much like the shriek of a bald eagle. Only, it was louder and more drawn out. A woman’s scream?
Damn! Adrenaline flooded his body. What the hell kind of trouble had that woman gotten herself into now. He dropped the deer and ran over the rise leading to the valley. His eyes scanned the a
rea, apprehensive about what he would find. The thought of a party of Blackfoot in the valley entered his mind. Everything appeared normal. His gaze swept across the valley a second time. He saw her. In the river. The current carried her unmoving body. A jolt of adrenaline hit him. Was she dead?
“Dammit!” he shouted. How the hell did she end up in the river this far upstream? He dropped his rifle and sprinted down the slope, dodging or leaping over the gaping holes left by countless ground squirrels that lived under the earth. Racing across the meadow towards the banks of the Madison, he yanked his pouches from around his neck. Without slowing, he unstrapped his belt, and pulled his shirt off over his head.
Visions of Morning Fawn drowning in a river flooded his mind. Why was this happening again? Two years ago, he hadn’t been there to save her. He wasn’t going to let it happen this time. He pushed himself to an even faster pace. It felt like an eternity before he reached the riverbank. Without breaking stride, he dove into the water, shaking the hair out of his face when he broke through the surface. Pulling himself through the current with long and powerful strokes, he came up behind her. He grabbed her by the waist in one swift motion and pulled her to him.
“Get the hell away from me!” she shrieked, kicking and thrashing, her arms flailing wildly in the air. His hold tightened around her.
“Be still, dammit, so I can get you to shore,” he growled in her ear. He tread water and tried to keep both of them afloat. Her fair skin glided against his in the water, the stark contrast against his darker tone shimmering under the waves. The realization that she wore no clothing suddenly jolted him like a lightning strike. His stomach tightened. He ground his teeth. How much more could this woman torment him? Aimee swung herself around, almost butting heads with him. She relaxed for a split second, recognition filling her eyes.
Yellowstone Heart Song Page 6
