"Darn it, Jon," Caitlyn said as she rode up beside him. "You're going about this the wrong way."
"Get your ass back up that hill," Jon growled, never once taking his eyes from the bull buffalo, which snorted and raised its head to glare at them with red eyes. "It's too dangerous down here for you."
Caitlyn let out an exasperated whuff of air. "It's gonna be danged dangerous for you here in a minute, you don't listen to what I tell you. Even your horse has got more sense than you do!"
By now the entire herd had turned their heads in the direction of the two riders. Several cows snorted to call their calves to their sides, and Jon's horse began backing away.
Caitlyn reached over and grabbed the bridle of Jon's horse. "Don't let him move," she ordered. "Keep him still."
"Why the hell should I do that?" Jon shot back. "Let's get out of here and back up the hill. I'll get them moving by shooting at them."
"Look," Caitlyn said. "They really can't see us. Buffalo have got poor eyesight, and the wind's blowing our way, so they can't smell us. That old feller there just senses there's something nearby he ought to be worried about — mostly because he can probably smell the blood on those two animals you shot."
Confirming Caitlyn's words, the huge bull lowered its head again and walked over to sniff at one of the dead buffalos. It nudged the carcass once, then lifted its head and let out a bellow. Several of the cows raised their tails and started trotting away, with their calves following them, but the bull turned its head back toward Jon and Caitlyn.
"Why isn't that horse of yours acting skittish?" Jon asked.
"He's an Indian pony. He's hunted buffalo before."
"Well, how the hell long do we have to sit here?"
"Reckon that's gonna be up to that bull over there."
"If he can't see us, why don't we just ride away?"
"'Cause he can hear," Caitlyn said with a look that told Jon just how stupid she thought that remark was. "And he can feel — he'll feel the ground shaking under our horses' feet and then know just where the heck we're at."
Suddenly a small buffalo calf stumbled out of the brush a few dozen yards from Caitlyn and Jon, bawling loudly for its missing mother. The bull charged with a bellow of rage.
Caitlyn gasped and dropped the bridle of Jon's horse, then slashed her own reins on its rump when it lunged away. Kneeing her pinto in the opposite direction that Jon's horse took, she bent low and craned her head over her shoulder to see which set of pounding hooves the enraged buffalo would follow.
It came after her — but so did the entire herd. The calf's mother paused only long enough to shove the calf once before she trailed through the choking dust after the stampede.
The rumbling roar behind her grew louder as Caitlyn's pony raced across the valley floor. She hoped like hell that Jon had enough sense buried somewhere in that greenhorn mind of his to get back up on the ridge and stay the heck out of the way. Glancing behind her again to gauge the distance separating her from the buffalo, she pulled the pony's head around and sent him flying across the path of the stampede, rather than in the same direction.
Horror crawled into her chest as Caitlyn realized she had misjudged the speed of the herd. They would be on her before she could get out of the way. One huge bull on the edge of the stampede was only ten feet away.
The bull crumbled to the ground, and the buffalo behind it crashed into the body and went down in a tumbling heap. The next huge body swung past the downed bodies, brushing the tip of the pinto's tail as it passed.
Caitlyn clenched her knees and sawed on the pinto's reins until it came to a halt. She turned the horse and watched the rest of the herd stream on by, gulping in draughts of air and trying to calm the frantic beat of her heart. Lordy, that had been close. If that bull hadn't stumbled....
She glanced at the other end of the valley and saw Jon standing on the hillside, his rifle still against his shoulder as though he were frozen in place. The last of the stampede streamed past, and Caitlyn looked back at the buffalo that had almost run her down. The second buffalo got to its feet and raced after the herd, but the first one lay unmoving — obviously dead. Had it broken its neck in the fall, or — no, even her Paw would've had trouble picking off a moving buffalo in the middle of a stampede.
Caitlyn rode over to the dead buffalo and slid to the ground. After watching the animal for a few seconds, to assure herself that it was indeed dead, she walked over and stared down at the body. Behind the horns, fresh blood seeped from a bullet wound.
Caitlyn turned to stare back at the hillside again. Now Jon stood beside his upright rifle, the barrel of the gun topping even his tall frame, and his blond hair shining in the sunlight. She measured the distance between Jon and the buffalo bull with her eyes, shaking her head in denial, but knowing Jon had somehow actually made that impossible shot.
Oh, she knew those buffalo guns could shoot a fair distance — she had watched the matches at rendezvous and seen men hit targets a half-mile away. Stationary targets, though, not a moving buffalo bull that could almost outrun a horse when it was spooked.
Her respect for Jon went up a notch, but almost immediately she cringed inside at the thought of facing those icy blue eyes when she saw Jon move over and grab his horse's reins. Thank goodness — there came Silas over the ridge. Surely Silas would back her up and tell Jon it was his own darned fault Caitlyn had to lead the herd away to keep them both from being trampled.
She waited by the dead buffalo while Jon and Silas rode down the hillside and across the valley. Her chin tilted up and her shoulders stiffened as they came near, and she could hear the murmur of their voices, though she couldn't make out their words yet. They both fell silent when they came near.
Silas dismounted and looped the lead ropes of the two pack horses over his saddlehorn.
"You all right, Cat?" he asked in an anxious voice.
Caitlyn kept her eyes trained on Jon, who still sat on his horse. "Yeah. Thanks to Jon, there. 'Spect he told you that he shot that bull before it could run me down."
Jon ordered his body off the horse, but he couldn't seem to drop his reins. His clasp on them kept his fingers from trembling, and his knees were pressed against the horse's sides for the same reason. A picture of Caitlyn crouched over her wildly-galloping pinto's mane and the bull closing the gap between them kept flashing in and out of his mind, and he could still feel the imprint of his rifle butt against his shoulder.
The bull's head had kept bobbing up and down, and his rifle sight had wavered in time as he instinctively tried to judge the rhythm of the bull's stride and calculate the drop of his bullet. He didn't even remember pulling the trigger — just the deadly fear in his heart for the everlasting seconds it took the smoke to clear the end of his barrel.
He scanned her as she stood there with a look of half trepidation and half defiance on her face. Although he knew in one corner of his mind that she hadn't been hurt, he couldn't make the other corner accept it.
Finally he forced himself to dismount and walk over to her.
"Don't you ever, ever pull a stupid stunt like that again," he growled in a voice rusty with suppressed emotion. "Jesus, you could've been killed."
Caitlyn inched her chin up, then dropped it when she read not anger but anxiety in his blue eyes. She toed at a rock and took a deep breath.
"Th...thank you for what you did. I wouldn't've been able to help you if those critters had come after you instead. Didn't have no gun with me."
"Any gun," Jon murmured.
Caitlyn lifted her face. "Any gun," she repeated. Then she swayed toward him and Jon caught her in his arms.
"Damn it, Caitlyn," Jon said as he buried his face in her hair, "you scared the living hell out of me."
Silas remounted and rode back toward the first two buffalo Jon had shot in the other end of the valley. Guess he could get started on them, and leave that one there to Cat and Jon. Hopefully, they'd get around to butchering it after a bit.
****
Chapter 9
The little log cabin sat half way up the mountain side, near the shore of an azure lake, which reflected the snowy clouds drifting overhead. Towering pines and birch surrounded it, except for an area behind and off to the right, where trees had been cut for logs and wood, allowing some underbrush to spring up. Jon glanced at Caitlyn as they rode into the clearing, watching her face brighten with delight.
"Home," she whispered loud enough for Jon to catch the word.
He studied the small structure as they approached. Home, she called it in that reverent voice. Home to him had been a huge, white-pillared mansion outside Richmond, with so many rooms he had never bothered to count them. He didn't recall ever having felt even a slight stirring when he returned from a trip and saw the house.
Guess that's the difference between a house and a home, Jon mused silently.
Suddenly the pup took off toward the cabin, barking furiously. An answering roar sounded behind the partially open door.
"Gol'darn it," Silas said as he pulled his horse to a halt. "There's a critter in there."
"Get back here, Dog!" Caitlyn yelled at the same moment Silas spoke. She wisely didn't follow the pup, but sat watching it ignore her and streak through the doorway.
A second later, the pup kie-yied and yelped, then raced back through the door with its tail between its legs. A yearling black bear cub was hot on the pup's rear, growling and snorting as it chased the pup in a circle.
Jon glanced back and forth from Silas to Caitlyn to see them both with hands folded on their mounts' necks, shaking their heads.
"Uh...you want me to try to shoot that bear?" he asked.
"Naw," Silas replied. "He ain't got enough fat on him this time of year to make him worth killin'."
"Dog's gonna have to learn," Caitlyn said, keeping her eyes on the fracas in the yard.
The bear cub reared on its hind legs and swatted at the dog, which dodged the deadly claws, then circled the cub and bit its rump. The cub whirled and slashed again. It threw its head back and roared, flashing white fangs. The dog backed away, barking wildly.
The bear charged. The dog ran. They both disappeared around the side of the cabin.
"Uh oh," Caitlyn said. "You might want to get that rifle ready now, Jon."
Jon shot her a quizzical look, but he lifted the rifle to his shoulder. Barely thirty seconds later, the pup flew back around the side of the cabin, with a much larger, louder snarling bear at its heels. The sow skidded to a stop when she caught sight of the humans, but the pup came barreling past the horses, and crouched with a whimper behind them.
"Wait, Jon," Caitlyn said. "Don't shoot just yet."
The sow stood up on her hind legs and roared.
"Now?" Jon asked.
"Huh uh. She's just warning us that she's protecting her cub," Caitlyn said. "Maybe she'll go back to take care of it and not bother us."
The sow dropped to the ground and lifted her nose, sniffing the air. She took a step forward, then halted and glanced over her shoulder. The yearling's head poked around the side of the cabin, and the sow whirled with a growl and headed for her cub.
The yearling's head disappeared with a snap, and Caitlyn giggled as the sow lumbered after it. A moment later, she caught sight of the cub running across an opening in the brush behind the cabin, with its mother close behind. The cub glanced back at its mother, missing a step and tumbling end over end. It regained its feet with the help of a swat from the sow, and both animals vanished in the underbrush.
"Young'uns," Silas said with a smile. "They ain't got a lick of sense sometimes."
"More trouble than they're worth," Caitlyn agreed, and Jon shot her a puzzled glance at the contemptuous tone of her voice.
Jon eased the rifle hammer back in place and picked up his reins to follow Caitlyn and Silas toward the cabin. They tied the horses to a hitching post, and Caitlyn propped her hands on her slender hips as she stared at the door.
"Probably gonna be a mess in there," she said. "I told Paw to put a lock on before we left, but he said a cabin ought to be left so's any mountain man who needed shelter or a meal could use it."
"That there's the code of the mountains," Silas said. "Nobody never takes more than they need — leastways, nobody who can call hisself a proper mountain man."
"Might's well go see," Caitlyn said with a shrug.
"Here," Jon said as he grabbed her arm. "I'll go in first. There may be another animal of some kind in there."
Caitlyn frowned at him for a second. That protective streak of his was getting a bit out of hand. Or was it? She sort of enjoyed the idea of him checking out the cabin first — poking around to make sure it was safe for her to go inside. It made her feel sort of — safe.
"All right," she said with a smile that almost knocked Jon's breath from his chest. "You want Dog to go with you?"
"Nope." Jon managed to return her smile somehow — he could see the reflection of his face in those lake blue eyes. "You keep that animal out here. I'd probably be in more jeopardy from him than another bear cub inside."
"Won't be another bear in there, Jon," Caitlyn told him in a teasing voice. "That old sow wouldn't've left it behind."
Jon glanced down at his fingers, which were stroking the silky skin on the underside of Caitlyn's forearm. Reluctantly, he drew his hand back and turned to the cabin door.
Inside, he shook his head in disgust. A clay pot lay shattered on the floor, honey oozing into the cracks between the pine boards. He stepped over a chair with a broken leg, and eased between it and the table, which wobbled and crashed to the floor when he brushed against it. Another missing leg, he saw.
A shredded blanket hung down on his right, and Jon pushed it aside with his rifle barrel to find a cot built against the wall. The covers were in disarray, and pillow feathers lay scattered all around. After bending to glance under the cot, he dropped the blanket, and turned to study the rest of the room.
Pots and pans hung on hooks beside the fireplace, which took up most of the back wall. No stove. Heck, he couldn't even begin to imagine what a job it would be to get a stove out to one of these isolated mountain cabins. A barrel that must have contained flour lay on its side, white piles of snowy drifts cascading across the floor. Here and there, Jon saw white bear paw prints on the pine boards.
The shelves along the other wall were empty — a jumble of the goods they had contained was piled beneath them. Jon shook his head. Salt, pepper, grease and other unrecognizable matter covered the mess.
He turned toward the back of the cabin again. Beside the fireplace, he noticed another door, also covered by a blanket. Bypassing a second chair, he carefully lifted the blanket to peer inside.
The cub evidently hadn't bothered this room. On the right, another neatly made up cot was built beneath a window with ruffled blue curtains covering the oilskin pane. Caitlyn's room. A rag rug lay beside the cot and an ermine fur stretched on the back wall for decoration, above a shelf holding some clothing. The side wall of the fireplace made up the left wall, assuring heat during the frigid winter.
"Jon?"
Jon quickly left the room at the sound of Caitlyn's voice. "Just a second...."
But she had already entered the cabin. Jon's heart melted when he saw the woebegone look on Caitlyn's face as she stared around the room.
"Don't worry, Caitlyn," he said as he hurried to her side. "I'll help you clean up the mess. It's really not as bad as it looks, and the cub never touched your room."
Caitlyn swiped at a stray tear on her cheek. "Paw worked awful hard building that there table and them chairs. Lots of trappers just haul in a cut log to set on, but Paw said he wanted us to have a nice place to live. He... he...."
She broke off with a sob, and Jon pulled her into his arms, stroking her hair when she buried her face against his shoulder.
"Shhhh, honey," he murmured. "I'll fix them for you, I promise. Charlie and I used to help out the carpenter now and then, and I'm sure I
can figure out how to mend these things for you."
Caitlyn drew back and wiped the heels of her hands beneath her eyes. "Who...who's Charlie?"
"My brother," Jon told her.
"I didn't know you had a brother. You never mentioned him."
Refusing to relinquish his hold when she tried to pull away, Jon replied, "I'll tell you about him some day, Caitlyn. Are you feeling a little better now?"
She hiccuped a sob, but nodded her head, gazing up into his face. Her blue eyes were still tear-sparkled, shimmering in the dimness inside the cabin, and her lower lip was caught between her teeth, as though to keep her sobs trapped. Jon lifted his hand and ran his thumb across her mouth — that mouth that was only a scant inch or two below his own lips.
He lowered his head. Her mouth opened slightly, freeing her lip. He cupped her cheek, tracing his thumb along the softness.
"Caitlyn?" he whispered.
"Yes?" Her breath mingled with his, and she tilted her head a little.
"I think I'm going to kiss you," Jon murmured.
"I sure hope so," Caitlyn breathed.
With a muffled groan, Jon caught her lips with his own and gathered her back into his arms. She tasted a little salty from the tear that had escaped her eye — but sweet, so sweet and so soft. Soft, yet firm. She stiffened just barely, as though she wasn't quite sure how he expected her to respond, and he coaxed — nibbled and coaxed some more, until she melted and wrapped her arms around his neck.
Jon buried his fingers in her hair to hold her near and keep those salty-wine tasting lips available at just the right angle for another kiss, as soon as he caught his breath.
Caitlyn smiled dreamily and barely opened her eyes. "Was...was it all right? I...I never kissed anyone before."
"It was perfect. Absolutely, utterly perfect. And you?"
"I've sort of forgot already," Caitlyn teased. "Maybe you could show me again how it feels."
Jon complied. This time he made sure she would have no failing of memory. He kissed her until he was afraid he would bruise her — kissed her eyes shut when she tried to open them — kissed her lips again, nuzzled her ears and left each one wet from his tongue. Kissed the delectably soft neck — ran his tongue along that pretty little chin bone. Captured that delicious mouth again until Caitlyn was forced to pull away with a gasp for air.
Mountain Magic Page 10
