"Yep," Caitlyn admitted. "And Nez Perce, along with a little Sioux, Crow, and a smatterin' of a few other Indian tongues. Bet it's more than you can speak."
"I'll have you know I'm quite fluent in French and Latin! I can also read and translate German, along with Spanish, though it's not the pidgin Spanish spoken here in the United States. I converse quite adequately in Spain. Even Italy!"
"Well, now," Caitlyn said, considering. "Might be some of that French would help you out here in the mountains. Lots of it's got mixed up in the Indian languages. Rest of it might as well be used to entertain yourself while you're runnin' a trap line for all the good it is."
Jon groaned and turned an imploring glance on Silas. "Silas, couldn't you have found someone to take her off our hands on your way back here?"
"Ain't that simple, Jon. Couple things you ought to know and I'll explain them to you after we get Cat over to the pond for her bath."
"Cat?"
"Cat O'Shaunessy, meet Jonathan Edward Clay," Silas introduced. "Just call him Jon, though. He ain't been out here long enough to earn himself a proper moniker."
"Oh, you mean like they call you 'Swift Feet' sometimes?" Jon said somewhat scornfully. "Thanks, but I'll stick to Jon. And what kind of name's Cat?"
"Earned that moniker all by myself, after I outrun a whole pack of Blackfeet one fall," Silas said with as haughty a look as he could manage. "And Cat's short for Caitlyn, the adopted daughter of an old and close partner of mine, now dead and gone. You watch your mouth 'round her, boyo, 'cause I've promised her my pertection in memory of her dead Paw."
"You? I thought I was the one who won her at bones."
"Ain't no one won me," Caitlyn informed him. "Wasn't no slave to begin with to be traded away. You should've asked Tall Man what the deal was when he drug me out there."
"I tried...."
"Not hard enough," Caitlyn informed him smugly. "You should've made sure just exactly who I was before you squatted down to shake again. You'd've found out Tall Man was playin' his own game with you — tryin' to win back some of his loot by lettin' you think you'd get me if you won instead."
"Silas?" Jon questioned.
"She's right, boyo. I didn't recognize Cat at first, otherwise I might've been a little more careful 'bout the whole deal. 'Course that likker we'd been downin' all day might've had somethin' to do with us not bein' as suspicious as we should've been."
Jon turned abruptly away and strode over to the leanto. Ducking inside, he rummaged around in the darkness, then stuck his head back out.
"Bring me one of those branches from the fire so I can see in here, Silas," he called.
"You ain't gonna stick a burnin' branch inside our sleepin' place," Silas called back. "Might catch it on fire and and it's too danged late to have to build another one!"
Jon shrugged and reached inside to drag out both their packs. He dug in his and pulled something out, tossing it to one side, then reaching in again.
Silas and Caitlyn glanced at each other, both mystified by Jon's actions. They stood silently while Jon pulled everything he had won from Tall Man out of one pack, then dug in Silas's until he uncovered his elderly partner's spare britches and tossed them on the pile.
"Where's your extra shirt, Silas?" he asked over his shoulder.
"Don't have one," Silas replied. "'Member, I left that piece of rag at the stream where we washed a'for we came on in to rendezvous. What you want it for, anyway? An' what you gonna do with my britches?"
"She sure can't wear mine," Jon spat. "Here." He grabbed the fine, linen shirt he'd worn when he left Virginia and laid it on the pile. Rising, he gestured at the goods at his feet.
"There. There's clothing and soap and everything I won off that sneaky Indian. She can have it all and buy herself a place with some other crew. You said we could get some new clothing made by the Indian women while we were here, Silas, and I'll pay for your new britches out of my share of the furs."
"Jon, Jon," Silas said with a smirk. "You ain't been listening. Cat ain't no slave to be traded from man to man. Fact is, she ain't even Indian — she's white as you and me. And I done told you she's under my pertection."
"Silas...!"
"Boyo, you weren't this mouthy all winter. Hell, I couldn't get more'n a word or two out of you at a time. Sure is gonna cut into the peace and quiet I so admire, you keep chatterin' like this from now on. Reckon you wanna give them things to Cat, that's a good idear, though. She's gonna need some things maybe we won't think of, and she can trade for them herself."
"You're serious, aren't you?" Jon asked. "You really are going to take her with us into the mountains this winter!"
"It's what I been tellin' you, Jon. Now, come along so's we can make sure Cat don't git disturbed while she takes her bath."
Jon stared at his partner, resolutely ignoring the tattered ragamuffin at Silas's side. If Silas thought he was going to stand close while that little package of contradictions turned herself from five feet of stinking refuse into a clean, soft-skinned, sexy....
Jon's fist clenched at his side and he rubbed the back of the finger that had touched Caitlyn's neck against his buckskin-clad leg. Now, how the heck did he have any idea what was under that at least five pounds of dirt? His other hand, which had examined Cat's arm, started tingling and he wiped it across the front of his shirt.
"You...." Jon cleared his throat and licked a dry tongue around his lips. Damn, he wanted another drink. "You don't need me," he said. "You just said she's under your protection. Well, you go protect her while she bathes."
"Four eyes are better than two, Jon," Silas said as he walked over and searched through the pile Jon had gathered for the soap. "Must be over two thousand trappers and Indians here. You don't 'spect me to keep an eye on all of 'em alone, do you?"
"Just give me one of them guns," Caitlyn put in. "I can protect myself."
Besides, she'd seen that raw hunger on other men's faces. Jon's look wasn't so different — well, maybe a little. For some reason his look didn't set her mind to remembering the wolf's jaw in her blanket bundle.
But that was just what she did think about now. Caitlyn shook her head in disgust at the thought. The mud on her legs, which hadn't bothered her after she got used to it, itched furiously, and her nose wrinkled as she caught a whiff of herself.
"Dash darn it anyway," she said with a stamp of her foot, which she immediately saw Jon drop his gaze to, "make up your minds!" She lifted her foot and curled it against the back of her leg, flinching when her toenails scraped against the crust of mud. Off balance, she staggered a step toward the fire.
Jon instinctively leapt forward and caught her, whirling her a safe distance from the flames. Damn it, on top of smelling bad, she was clumsy! Funny, though. The breath that feathered across his face when she turned a grateful gaze up to him didn't stink — it held a hint of mint. Through the slightly parted lips, he could see the straight, white teeth Tall Man had wanted him to examine. And, yes, above that pert nose, blue eyes, not Indian brown — blue eyes that could change color, he thought to himself in awe as those eyes darkened to indigo and he heard her teeth clamp shut with a snap.
"Thank you," Cat growled through her clenched teeth. "Now, you've got a half-second to get them damn paws off me before I kick you where it'll make you sing a few high notes until you heal!"
Jon jerked his hand from the rip in her dress, where his fingers had been caressing a smooth, silky back. "Damn it," he snarled. "You're about the most ungrateful piece of baggage I've ever run across. We're going to get one thing straight between us right now...."
"It ain't gonna be that thing that's tryin' to stick out straight between your legs," Caitlyn interrupted with a smirk. "You ain't brought enough furs in for that, even if you offered them all to me! Like I told Paw's friend there, I bed down alone."
"And you're welcome to it! I'd as soon bed down in a buffalo wallow with a wolverine! And I've got far better uses for my furs than trading them to a woma
n for sex!"
"Oh," Cat said musingly. "Huh. Guess a body can't never tell with white folks. Least the Indians make them walk backwards, so it's clear to everyone."
Silas's roar of laughter split the air and Jon whirled around to see his partner with his head thrown back, one finger pointing at Jon, the hand shaking with convulsions. A fiery blush spread over Jon's face, stealing down his neck and even over his shoulders under the buckskin shirt. There wasn't a doubt in his mind this time about what had set Silas off. A picture of the mincing Indian man in the Sioux camp they visited last winter sprang unbidden into Jon's mind. Jon's stomach knotted as he recalled the Indian man batting his eyelashes at him after he strolled backwards by him.
"I'm not...that's not what I...oh, good God," Jon sputtered. "What the hell's the use?"
"It's all right," Cat assured him. "Probably just as well, seein' as how we'll be spendin' the winter together. The Indians accept things like that, and guess I've spent enough time with them that it don't bother me none, neither. You can't blame me for mistakin' it, though, the way you been eyein' me."
"I haven't been...!" Jon drew a hand across his face, then glared at her. "Go get your damned bath! And while you're doing it, think about this! You're dead wrong about what you just made up your mind about, but I wouldn't touch a woman like you with a ten-foot pole. You keep going around making remarks not proper for a female, though, some man's going to take you up on it — see just whether or not you know as much as you've been spouting off about!"
"Ain't a whole lot of room in a wigwam, and Paw and I never built a cabin bigger than we needed just to keep the snow off us — and sometimes Sky Woman — all winter," Caitlyn said with a shrug. "Reckon I know enough to keep my body my own. Let some snortin', snufflin' man too close, you end up saddled with a young'un to take care of, though Sky Woman was lucky enough that didn't happen to her."
"There you go again!" Jon shouted. "Didn't I just tell you remarks like that aren't proper conversation for a woman to make?"
"Why not?" Caitlyn asked, a truly puzzled look on her face.
"Because they make a man think of things better kept off his mind!" Jon said in exasperation. "What the heck have I been telling you?"
Caitlyn frowned and cocked her head to one side. "You mean, I wouldn't've needed to smear this mud all over me? If I'd just have kept my mouth shut and not let those men know that I knew why they was tryin' to get in my britches, they'd've left me alone?"
Silas bit back another guffaw and thrust a bar of soap into Caitlyn's hand. "I wouldn't go that far, Cat," he said as Jon turned away with an irritated moan. "You gotta remember, Ol' Mick had himself a reputation in these here mountains. Wasn't no one gonna try anything with you while he was alive, leastways not if they figured Mick would find out. He'd've hunted them down and they'd've wished they'd been caught by the Blackfeet instead, time Mick got done killin' them inch by inch."
"Then why's he tryin' to tell me...?"
"Cat, how 'bout we have a visit with Sky Woman a'for we leave?" Silas found a blush stealing over his own face. "Jon's right 'bout it not bein' proper for a man and woman to be discussin' such. You can ask Sky Woman your questions and let her explain it to you. Just try to remember that there's different kinds of men around. Most of 'em got a lot of respect for a woman and would sooner die themselves than hurt a female, but there's others who ain't so particular."
"Wish I knew where that 'most of them with respect's' been hidin'," Caitlyn grumbled. "Guess I'll ask Sky Woman about that, too. Now, we gonna go get me that bath or not?"
"We damned sure are!" Jon tramped over to the lean-to and picked up his long rifle. Without a glance at his companions, he strode off through the clump of trees toward where he and Silas had found an old beaver dam still partially holding back a stream from the mountains. Ears sharpened by his past months in this wild wilderness, he soon picked out the sounds of footsteps following him from among the rustles of night creatures scurrying away at his approach.
The haunting cry of a mountain wolf echoed from a nearby hillside, answered almost at once from the opposite ridge. Jon's fingers instinctively tightened on his rifle, though Silas had told him wolves avoided men — except maybe near the end of winter when they had empty bellies from poor hunting. The sound nearly always sent a prickle up his spine, though, and he glanced toward the hilltop, trying to pinpoint the source from among the echoes rebounding around him.
An ebony sky spread out before his gaze, dotted with diamond pinpricks until it lightened to charcoal where the moon was rising. Beyond those faintly-outlined hilltops sat the mountains where he had spent the winter. Grudgingly he admitted to himself that he might never have made it out of there to rendezvous this summer if not for Silas. Somewhere in that rugged expanse, he had left the cocksure young man who rode out of Virginia in a rage and found instead new strengths and attitudes in himself. Thanks in part to Silas.
Now Silas expected him to ignore all the plans they had made together the last few weeks and accept Silas's "pertection" of that...that kid, he decided to call her in his mind. What else could you call a child-woman who seemed stuck halfway between acknowledging her own developed body and simple-minded naivete over her effect on the male population?
His booted foot slipped on a round stone, and Jon cursed softly under his breath as he righted himself.
"Guess I ain't the only clumsy one," he heard Caitlyn say behind him.
"Been tryin' to get him into moccasins," Silas replied. "Maybe you can make him some. Them boots he's got on's 'bout wore through."
"Reckon I can, you got some deerskins with your furs. I probably made me and Paw a hundred or more pairs over the years. Rabbit or wolf fur's good to line them with for wintertime."
"Don't catch too many wolves in our traps," Silas said with a sly look at her. "They're too smart. You'll have to make do with rabbit, and they ain't got such big jaws."
Caitlyn joined Silas's snickers, and Jon clenched his teeth over his irritation. The two of them were already acting as though they'd known each other all their lives, effectively excluding him from their mutual easiness with each other. The hell with them. Maybe he'd just take his share of furs and get his own outfit for the winter — go on back into the mountains alone. Plenty of trappers led a solitary life without a partner, or so he'd heard.
He had come to love the peace and serenity of the mountains as much as Silas claimed to this past winter. The quiet stillness — air so pure it hurt you to breathe it. Always on the plantation, even at night, sounds disrupted the silence. Horses and cows neighed or lowed. Dogs barked at imagined intruders. Traces of smoke lingered in the air from the smokehouse and blacksmith forge.
And trips into nearby Richmond. Once he hadn't even noticed the smell from slop buckets dumped into the gutters or the stench from overflowing spittoons in the taverns. But the subconscious memories, set now against the contradiction of the splendor of the mountains, almost made him wonder what the pull in Richmond had been. Besides Roxie, naturally.
Jon stopped beside the beaver pond and silently studied the surroundings, assuring himself they were alone. Even his eyes had sharpened over the past months, he realized as he found himself easily able to differentiate between what could have been a man standing beside a tree and the knotted bulge on the trunk it actually was. Satisfied there were no intruders — animal or human — to interfere with that little scamp scraping those gobs of muck off her, he turned to see Caitlyn already slipping one arm free from the sleeve of her dress.
Caitlyn froze and tossed him an angry glance. "You was all right like you was standin'. I didn't come out here to put on no show for you."
A whisper of moonlight glanced from alabaster skin, and Jon choked back a groan. The stupid little minx didn't even have the decency to pull her dress back up over the hint of fullness it had dropped below. Instead, she clutched the fingers of one hand in the sleeve on the opposite side of her body and just stood there!
"Where the he
ll's Silas?"
"Back over there," Caitlyn said with a short movement of her head. "Where you're gonna be before I make another move."
"Think so, huh?" Jon muttered under his breath.
With no warning, he dropped his rifle and surged forward. Disregarding Caitlyn's scream of rage, he grabbed her in his arms and strode to edge of the pond. With her arms effectively penned against his chest and in his grasp, her legs wildly bucking against his hold, he stood for a moment by the water.
"You flop-eared son of a knock-kneed jackass!" Caitlyn screamed. "Take your gol'damned hands off me!"
"Gladly!" Jon shouted. With a heave, he tossed her into the water.
"Now!" he yelled when she bobbed to the surface, spitting and sputtering and wiping at her eyes. "Don't even think about coming out of there until you're clean! Here!"
Jon reached down and grabbed the bar of soap from the pile of clothing Caitlyn had dropped on the bank and tossed it at her. It hit her between her breasts and Caitlyn reflexively grabbed it with one hand. Jon stomped over to his rifle and bent down just as something whizzed over his head and landed with a thunk against the pine tree ahead of him.
Jon stood and looked down at the bar of soap by his feet for a second. Shrugging his shoulders, he left it lying there and walked away.
"That soap's not going to do you any good out here," he called over his shoulder. "Best you haul your fanny out of that pond and get it yourself. But if I don't hear you in that water again in thirty seconds flat, I'll throw you back myself! And you won't get out again until I've made sure you're clean with my own hands!"
Caitlyn bit back the oath before it could escape her mouth, her teeth worrying her bottom lip as her rage faded into panic. He sounded like he meant it. Surely he wouldn't...a man didn't wash a woman. Not this woman, anyway.
Shivering horribly, she splashed out of the water and over to the pine tree. Grabbing the soap up, she stared at the spot where Jon had joined Silas to stand watch. She could hear the murmur of their voices and supposed Jon was explaining his cockamamie actions of a moment ago. Her fingers gripped the soap until it threatened to squirt out of her hand, and she clenched her teeth in renewed anger.
Mountain Magic Page 3
