Mountain Magic

by Simmons, Trana Mae

  One morning Caitlyn came out of the cabin to see Dog lying in front of the outhouse, which was set off to one side of the clearing. No doubt about where Little Sun was. Dog had appointed himself the tiny child's protector the day Spirit Eagle's son arrived.

  A moment later, Jon and Little Sun emerged from the outhouse. Jon had a slight grimace on his face, and when Little Sun caught sight of Caitlyn, he toddled toward her, babbling nonsense and stopping once to point back at Jon.

  As soon as he reached her, Caitlyn bent down and lifted the boy into her arms, trying to make sense of his words. Feeling his bare bottom beneath the buckskin tunic, she glanced questioningly at Jon as he approached.

  "Where's his nappy?" she asked.

  "Right here." Jon held it up with two fingers. "But you don't have to worry about him getting you wet. He's probably good for at least a little while yet."

  "Why are your britches all wet?"

  "I...uh...well, I figured it was time for him to learn what the outhouse was for. But I'm going to have to build a stool for him. And teach him to aim a little better."

  Caitlyn giggled and Little Sun pushed against her, indicating for her to put him down. He ran over to Jon, then lifted his small tunic. One tiny finger pointed up at Jon, directly between his legs, as he turned his little face toward Caitlyn.

  This time Caitlyn could make sense of at least two of his words. Big, obviously referred to Jon, and little to the boy's own anatomy. Caitlyn blushed furiously, but the heat in Jon's cheeks matched her own.

  "What have you been teaching him?" Caitlyn demanded through her embarrassment.

  "N...nothing. I mean...ah, hell," Jon said. "I'm going down to the lake and clean my britches.

  Jon limped away, and Little Sun turned a questioning gaze on Caitlyn as he dropped his tunic. "Hell?" he said clearly.

  Caitlyn saw Jon falter a step when he heard Little Sun's voice, then duck his head and limp a little faster toward the lake.

  "We're going to have a talk about your language, Jon Clay," she called after him. "Before we have my lessons this afternoon while Little Sun naps!"

  "Shit," Jon muttered under his breath. "She sounds just like a nagging wife."

  At the lakeshore, he turned and looked back at the cabin. Caitlyn again had Little Sun in her arms, evidently talking to him. Her index finger patted against the boy's plump cheek and that beautiful mouth was saying something, though he obviously couldn't hear her words from down by the lake.

  A shaft of sunlight filtered through a huge pine beside the cabin, striking reddish highlights from both Caitlyn's and Little Sun's raven hair. Caitlyn hadn't yet braided her hair this morning, and the luxurious mass fell over one shoulder, nearly to her knees, curling and waving its way downward. It contrasted with Little Sun's straight strands, but Jon knew both sets of locks were silky beneath his palms — and cheek.

  Suddenly Caitlyn glanced toward him and their gazes met. Recalling the vision he'd had of Caitlyn in the blue ball gown, with the two curly-topped kids peeking through the banister, Jon held her gaze for a long second. Could the vision have been a premonition from his subconscious, which already knew that Jon had met the one woman who could make his life complete?

  Caitlyn broke the contact first and shifted Little Sun to her hip as she walked back into the cabin. But Jon continued to stare at the cabin for several minutes after she disappeared, his thoughts swirling in his head and a contemplating frown on his face.

  Why had he ever thought that he could build a life with a shallow woman like Roxie? Granted, Roxie had seemed the epitome of the woman that any Southern gentleman would give his eyeteeth to have for a wife — soft-spoken, lady-like, perfect manners and huge eyes batting at him over her fan as she hung onto his every word. But he'd soon found out that her apparent innocence covered up a calculating mind, which had its own idea about the type of life Roxie had been born and bred for.

  The sex — allowed only after he had indeed proposed to Roxie — had been great at first. Now he wondered whether the clandestine meetings hadn't spiced it up somewhat. After they established a pattern of Jon sneaking into her bedroom twice a week, he'd at one point found himself just a little reluctant to make the ride to her plantation in the late night.

  He hadn't even bedded Caitlyn yet, but something told him that their joining would be pure bliss — much more than just a physical act. He'd only seen one marriage in his life that appeared to be based on love instead of the result of careful plotting of bloodlines and fortunes. His uncle Jonathan, for whom he had been named, and his wife, Amanda — Aunt Mandy, he called her — had made no pretensions about their union being anything but a love match. At balls their eyes would meet even while they were dancing with other partners, and Jon had never seen them within a foot of each other that Uncle Jonathan didn't have his arm around Mandy.

  Hell, that was what love was all about. Jon knew it as surely as he knew that it was more than physical lust he felt for Caitlyn.

  He didn't have a huge plantation to offer Caitlyn, where she could float around a polished ballroom in French gowns. But, thanks in part to Silas, he had a start on a life for himself — and Caitlyn. He'd sent a large share of the money from his furs back with Pete Smith to bank in St. Louis. And he still had that small legacy from his grandfather — neither his mother nor his step-father had been able to touch that.

  The breeze blew across his legs and Jon chuckled as he plucked the damp material away from the chill on his left leg. And he was quickly gaining experience about teaching toilet training to any son he had. He just had to remember to stand behind the young one, instead of at his side. Recalling Little Sun's wide-eyed innocence as he stood beside the toilet seat and swiveled around to watch Jon, his small stream spattering Jon's leg, he shook his head and laughed aloud.

  Right now, he better get these britches off and rub some damp sand into them to clean the buckskin before the stain set, along with the smell. He headed for a huge boulder up the shore, where he could remove his britches without being seen from the cabin.

  *****

  "So what you gonna do about it, boyo?" Silas asked a couple weeks later when they stopped for their noon meal.

  "Huh?" Jon asked. "About what?"

  "You and Cat, a'course. You've been more mooney-eyed than ever over her the last few weeks. You thinkin' about somethin' permanent here, or just some wintertime keepin' the cold off? She'd under my pertection, don't forget."

  "You believe what you want, Silas," Jon said with a wry chuckle. "But I've never met a woman in my life who's less needing of a man's protection than Caitlyn O'Shaunessy. Hell, she can ride as well as — better than most men. Probably shoot and hunt, too, if she needs to. I've never eaten this well in my life, and every meal's made up of stuff Caitlyn's gathered in the wild and prepared for us."

  Jon leaned his elbows on his knees and hunched over the fire, holding his tin cup in a spread palm. "She makes her own clothing — ours, too. She's smart as a whip. You're enjoying her reading to us in the evenings every bit as much as I am."

  "She's still a woman, Jon."

  "A hell of a woman," Jon admitted with a reluctant sigh. "But Caitlyn's made for life in these mountains, Silas. Out here, she's wild and free — like...like the eagles." He flicked the dregs from his coffee cup into the fire. "Can you imagine what she'd be like back east? All those restrictions that are placed on a woman? Hell, she'd wither and die."

  "Them's your plans then, huh? To make you a pile of money from these furs we've been trappin', then go back and wave it under the noses of them relatives you left behind? 'Specially under the nose of that there woman who sent you riding out here to the mountains like a dog that lost its prize bone to another dog? Show her what she missed?"

  "I don't remember ever mentioning Roxie to you."

  "Hell, you didn't have to. I ain't so old that I don't remember how a woman can tie a man up in knots 'til he don't know which way's up. Just when you think you've got a handle on them, they bat
those eyes a couple times and some woman you've never seen before looks up at you."

  "Man, you've got that right. Caitlyn's not like that, though, Silas. She's not contrived or dishonest. What you see with Caitlyn is who she is."

  Silas shook his head sadly. "Boyo, you've still got a lot to learn. And what you're gonna learn some day is that there's not a woman on earth that any man will ever know completely — no matter if he lives with her fifty years. She's still gonna surprise you more often than not — and that's part of the wonder of lovin' a woman, boyo. It's all those there contradictions tied up in one beautiful package. And when she loves you back, it's like the best of both worlds. You ain't just tied to one woman — she's a bunch of different women in one, and each day's a whole new world."

  "So you've been in love, too, huh?" Jon asked wryly.

  "Naw," Silas denied with a laugh. "Just observed over the years. Ain't never had no hankering for that sort of up and down life. Me, I like my peace and quiet too much. And I got itchy feet. Wouldn't've been right to 'spect some woman to trudge after me, and if we'd've had kids...well, I'd've wanted something more for them than a life like I've had."

  A sudden gust of wind blew a scattering of embers from the fire, and both Silas and Jon jumped to their feet to stamp out wisps of smoke in the dry grass near their campfire. By the time Jon had also shoveled dirt on the campfire and then drowned the lingering embers with a bucket of water, fat snowflakes were lazily drifting around the men. After a brief consultation, they agreed to head on back to the cabin for the rest of the day.

  "We've got our lines laid out in our minds, Jon," Silas said as they mounted their horses. "We know where the best furs are gonna be this winter, and now all we have to do is get our traps set out. We'll see what this here weather's gonna do. If there's gonna be a storm, we'll ride it out and then get out there and see which way the animals are moving around. Track them in the snow, so we'll be sure we're settin' our traps in the right spots."

  Jon nodded his head indifferently. As far as he was concerned, it could snow for a week of days. It would be a week spent in the cabin with Caitlyn.

  ****

  Chapter 16

  Caitlyn held the skinning knife balanced to throw, and Dog stood beside her, hackles raised and ears laid back, lips drawn away from viciously bared teeth. His snarls blended with her voice.

  "You can take yourself right back the way you came, Tall Man," she snapped. "If I feel like visiting Sky Woman, I'll get Jon or Silas to take me. I'm not going anywhere with you!"

  "My sister will be unhappy that you will not come." Tall Man urged his pony a step forward, ignoring the dog's increasing warning growl, but keeping a firm grip on his own knife in the hand hidden by his leg. "I promised her I would bring you."

  "I don't believe you," Caitlyn said. "Sky Woman knows how late in the season it's getting. She wouldn't ask me to try to come to her camp now, with the snow's fixing to set in and a chance of getting caught in a blizzard."

  Tall Man's eyes narrowed dangerously. "Do you call me a liar, Smelly Woman?"

  "Take it any way you want," Caitlyn spat, though a slow fear began crawling around in her stomach. "You might have thought you were being real sneaky, but we've known that you were around here. If you had a message for me from Sky Woman, why didn't you come in and tell me three weeks ago, when you first started hanging around my cabin?"

  Tall Man's fingers tightened on his knife. Someone may have seen him, but it wasn't this woman or those two poor-eyed white men. He had been close to the men several times — close enough to have sent his knife whispering through the air to end their lives.

  But the terms of the bargain had been laid out clearly. Only the woman was to be brought to the man, with no one else knowing what had happened to her. The death of anyone connected to her would cause an uproar in the mountains — make it less believable that the woman had tired of her life and returned to be with her own people.

  With an effort, Tall Man controlled his anger. "The weather is turning now. I will stay here for a while and eat at your camp. You can give me food to last while I travel back to my own wigwam."

  "Reckon I owe you some food," Caitlyn agreed cautiously, "since I ate at your wigwam last winter. But I don't want you here. You take your food and ride out and find your own camp."

  "I could have told you the same thing when you came to my wigwam in the last season of the colored leaves," Tall Man spat. "But you were made welcome!"

  "Not by you," Caitlyn denied. "And if my recollection is right, you're living with Sky Woman, not the other way around. Paw always made sure Sky Woman had everything she needed, and she lived alone when Paw wasn't with her. You moved in with her that summer before Paw died because you were tired of not having a woman around to cook for you. If Paw had've come back with me...."

  Caitlyn heard the door creak behind her. Darn it, she should have hooked the latch, but she'd wanted to hear Little Sun if he woke. Before she could make a grab for him, Little Sun toddled around her, stopping abruptly when he saw the Indian on his pony.

  Caitlyn snatched Little Sun into her arm, and his face immediately puckered into a scowl in preparation of a cry. "Hush," she ordered in a stern voice. "Quiet," she repeated in Nez Perce, which she knew the boy understood better.

  Little Sun widened his eyes at the unaccustomed tone from what he usually expected of Caitlyn, but he stuck his thumb into his mouth and laid his head on her shoulder.

  Still gripping her skinning knife, Caitlyn glanced at Tall Man. If she'd thought he looked dangerous before, she now saw a man whose entire being radiated a desire for vengeance — a hatred raging to be satisfied. Cold terror crawled up her spine.

  "Spirit Eagle's son," Tall Man whispered in a deadly voice. "You are caring for my enemy's son — a man who has been banned from his own people. It could be no one else, or I would have heard of it. We do not pass on to others tales of the shunned."

  Tall Man hawked and spit a gob on the ground. "Waugh! You are as dead to the Nez Perce. Sky Woman will never welcome you again when she learns of this."

  Caitlyn took an unconscious step backwards. "Your customs aren't mine," she managed to say in a calm voice. "You don't tell me what I can do — who I can or can't welcome into my own home."

  "My customs," Tall Man whispered in warning, "say I may kill the spawn of my enemies."

  His hand came up and Dog sprang. The pony reared in panic of the snarling animal, and Tall Man's knife landed in the cabin wall, a bare inch from Caitlyn's shoulder.

  She screamed and dodged inside the door, slamming it behind her and pushing the bar into place. Outside she could hear Dog's snarls and the pony's terrified neighs, interspersed with shouts of rage from Tall Man.

  She dropped Little Sun onto the bunk. "Stay there," she ordered.

  Racing back to the door, she hesitated only a second before she threw back the bar and opened it. After a brief glance at Tall Man, trying to gain control of his frantic pony, she tugged the knife from the cabin wall, then pulled the door firmly closed behind her.

  Shaking in fear, Caitlyn clutched a knife in each hand. I might have to kill him. The thought flashed through her head. Could she?

  Little Sun's tiny, frightened face when she dropped him onto the bunk flashed in her mind. Tall Man wanted Little Sun dead. Whatever enigmatic reason had sent him here to try to trick her into returning to the Nez Perce camp had been wiped away as soon as he laid eyes on Spirit Eagle's son.

  Dog flashed in and out between the pony's wildly dancing legs, barking furiously and nipping at whatever portion of the horse he could reach. Only the rigorous training gleaned from a lifetime spent on horseback kept Tall Man in place. Through the dust, Caitlyn caught sight of one of Tall Man's legs, his buckskin trousers shredded and ribbons of blood pouring down his leg.

  Dog hadn't only been attacking the pony.

  Suddenly Tall Man jerked cruelly on the pony's reins and turned it toward the far side of the clearing. It slashed ou
t once more with its hind legs, catching Dog on his shoulder and spinning him through the air. He landed with a thump, but sprang at once again to his feet.

  "Dog!" Caitlyn shouted. "No!"

  With a whine, Dog looked at her, then back toward Tall Man. He made one, limping lunge, but Caitlyn sharply shouted at him again. Curling back his lips, Dog sank to the ground.

  Tall Man viciously slapped his reins across the pony's nose, then jerked its head against its chest. The pony stood with chest heaving, flecks of foam spattering its muzzle.

  Tall Man didn't speak. He didn't have to. Caitlyn read every thought he had clearly in the menace emanating from his tightly coiled body and hard, flinty eyes.

  He flicked a glance at the knives held in her hands, then lifted his lips in a snarl that communicated to Caitlyn his lack of fear for her weapons. He slowly loosened his pony's reins, and the horse took a step forward.

  Dog jumped to his feet again, pricking his ears and looking into the underbrush. Caitlyn glanced briefly away from Tall Man, and when she hurriedly drew her attention back, she saw only the white rump of Tall Man's pony, disappearing from sight.

  Her shoulders slumped and she leaned back against the door, fingers still gripping the knives tightly. She couldn't seem to force loose her hold. When Jon and Silas rode into the clearing a moment later, they pulled their horses to an abrupt halt.

  Tensing in their saddles, both men scanned the scene. Jon's urgent instinct was to go to Caitlyn, but he took rigid control of his emotions.

  "Which way do you want me to go, Silas?" he asked in a quiet, deadly tone.

  Silas raised his voice, so Caitlyn could hear across the clearing. "Which way did he go, Cat?"

  Somehow Caitlyn managed to lift a hand and point. The snow, which had seemed to follow Jon and Silas on their ride back to the cabin, began falling, the soft flakes settling the churned up dust in the clearing.