Outlaw Moon

by Charlotte Hubbard

  She’d known for the last several miles that Miss Blanche would have to be left behind unless they could find a blacksmith, and when Karl raised his rifle again, the decision was easy to make. He’d buried two other intruders out back, after all. “It—it’s only fair to tell you that she needs a new shoe, and—”

  “Don’t give a damn about a shoe. Trade me horses or be gone—and take your chances, even at that.”

  “She’s yours, then.” Amber backed away, suddenly wanting to be out of this moody little man’s sight—out of the room where the bedclothes smelled as though they hadn’t been changed for weeks. “Jack and I won’t give you any trouble,” she assured him, and then with a sultry smile she added, “and I’ll keep him too busy to even look sideways at your wife, all right?”

  “No doubt.” He shuddered, and the slightly wild, maniacal look she’d first seen in his eyes returned. “Now get to work, dammit, and the first thing you’ll do is fix me some food besides that piss she’s cookin’ downstairs, dammit. Olga’s tastes try a man at times. Think she does it just to aggravate me into my grave, dammit, and to rot my guts.”

  Amber had to agree that the pot boiling on the hearth made the whole house smell like a week-old chamber pot on a hot day, and she quickly clattered downstairs to pass word to Rafferty. He was breaking eggs into a cast iron skillet where the bacon he’d cooked was pushed to one side. The otherwise grimy kitchen area had taken on an appetizing aroma that made her stomach rumble.

  “Yesss?” Jack said in a teasing drawl.

  She stopped ogling the five eggs that crackled merrily in the grease to grin at him. “I persuaded Karl to trade us a good gelding for Miss Blanche. He says we can stay as long as we want, if you’ll cook him something besides the piss in that pot out there. And leave his wife alone.”

  Rafferty rolled his eyes at the thought of seducing the massive woman who’d nearly shot his dog. “And what sort of story did you tell him to accomplish that?”

  She cleared her throat. “The truth. After a fashion.”

  “You told him we’re hiding out? Amber, that was—”

  “He seems to respect us more because of it. Thinks the white horse has magical powers,” she insisted. She watched with her stomach in her eyes as he expertly flipped the eggs onto two plates. “It bought us some time. He had a rifle pointed at me, so I had to say something.”

  Rafferty relaxed. It seemed both their hosts might be a little trigger-happy, and he was pleased that Amber had set aside her devotion to the lame mare in favor of a better mount for herself. “What’s he laid up with?”

  “Damned if I know. Says dammit as often as most people breathe, and gets a funny look when he’s rattled.”

  “Like a wild-eyed maniac?”

  Amber saw the gleam in Rafferty’s grin and breathed easier as they sat down at the cluttered, crudely-hewn table. “Just like Rafe Jackson, yes. Otherwise, I’m not so sure but what Karl’s letting himself rot away just for the hell of it. You’ll have to ask Olga, I guess.”

  “I’d rather not. They both seem pretty fond of their firearms,” he said as he cut into his eggs. “You have to wonder why, out here in the middle of nowhere.”

  They ate the simple meal quickly, because they were hungry—and because they both wondered about this unusual couple they’d come to lodge with. The house was as untidy as the farmyard outside, as though neither Olga nor Karl cared where they left food and utensils, or how broken-down the fences and outbuildings looked. Amber was trying to figure out whether her uneasiness stemmed from this lack of basic cleanliness, or from something about the farm couple themselves, when Jack rose to carry his plate from the table.

  “If you’ll bring in the rest of our gear and see to the horses, I’ll rustle up a plate of something for our host,” he said quietly. “Tell Olga I’ll be out after that, to help with the livestock.”

  Nodding absently, Amber swallowed the last morsel of the crisp, salty bacon. “I suppose my contribution will be some housekeeping. Mama used to complain that I wasn’t thorough enough in the cracks and corners, but I can do better than this.”

  When she stepped outside to relieve Miss Blanche of the rest of her pack load, the fresh air was reason enough to take her time—already the cloying odor of cabbage had permeated her clothing. The sky overhead had changed to an opalescent gray and tiny snowflakes drifted peacefully around her, so delicate and pristine she had to smile and lift her face to them.

  Miss Blanche nickered and nuzzled her out of her reverie. Both horses were hungry and tired, and it seemed only fair to leave the last of the gear on the porch to tend these faithful animals first. As she led them toward the weather-beaten barn, she heard Olga talking to someone in a much friendlier voice than before: the heavily-bundled woman made a strange sight, crooning to Maudie while leaning down to shake her paw, laughing girlishly when the dog performed each of the tricks she named.

  “We’ll have her sing with Jack’s harmonica tonight,” Amber called out to the woman. “She’s really quite a show-off.”

  “Yep. Knows ’er way around them sheep, too,” Olga replied.

  It was good the collie had met with the farm wife’s favor, as bearlike and cantankerous as she appeared, and yet something about the exchange between Olga and Maudie struck her as odd. Amber shrugged it off—these prickly little premonitions must be the result of too many nights on the move—and finished seeing that their horses were cared for.

  When she emerged from the dim, musky barn, however, she paused to observe the pair again. It seemed that Maudie was happy to speak or roll over or do whatever her new admirer commanded, yet when the woman reached out to touch her, the dog backed away . . . as though she, too, was uncertain that Olga could be trusted.

  “Jack’ll be out in a bit,” she called over as she walked back toward the house.

  “Good. Got a lamb needs looking at.”

  Amber nodded and walked faster. She wasn’t sure why she felt compelled to be with Rafferty, to tell him of her growing apprehension, but when she stepped back into the overwarm, pungent main room of the farmhouse, the sight of him descending the stairs made her exhale with relief.

  Jack scowled. “What’s wrong?”

  “Can’t put my finger on it,” she whispered quickly, “but I don’t like this place. Something doesn’t feel right.”

  “And that’s bound to improve once you remove a few layers of grease and grime,” he teased.

  “That’s not it.” She paused, glancing in the direction of the barnyard. “Maudie’s acting funny, too. And I guess there’s a lamb out there you’re to look at. Maybe it’s all in my head, but I hope you’re not planning to stay here long.”

  Jack gave her a quick kiss before he shrugged into his jacket, but it was only to cover his own apprehension. Karl had been the crazy old coot he’d expected— had quizzed him while he wolfed down his food, and then had dismissed him quickly, as though there were a secret in the room Rafferty wasn’t supposed to see. Had he not turned silently and looked back, he wouldn’t have caught the grizzled old gnome springing nimbly from beneath the blankets to gaze out the small, smudgy window. He was cackling at something as though he didn’t have a brain in his head when Jack started down the stairs.

  And now Olga and his dog were nowhere in sight. As a stranger to the place, he figured he had an excuse to wander around a bit before he set to work, and Rafferty headed to the barn first. The drafty structure hadn’t been mucked out for weeks, he noted, and the straw their two horses were munching looked none too fresh. But the bay gelding they’d traded Blanche for seemed solid and fit enough. The only other inhabitant of the barn was a tall, muscled draft horse that eyed him as he passed by the beast’s stall. Odd that on a spread this size, there was only the one animal to pull farm machinery with ....

  Probably has oxen in another shed, he reasoned as he walked outside again. Karl seems the right speed to still work with such slow, contrary animals.

  The blather of the sheep
soothed him, calling up memories of the Colorado ranch where he and Maude worked for weeks without seeing another soul, and were content to share their labors and their friendship. Foxe Hollow had been the perfect hideout for men like himself, and as he thought about the first-rate food and supplies that were delivered monthly to him and the other sheepherders who dotted the vast acres of pastureland, he was again aware that this Minnesota farmstead was sadly lacking.

  Perhaps Amber’s uneasiness was contagious, but he, too, had the sudden urge to be gone from this place. Rafferty shook himself from his reminiscings, now aware that the tiny tinglings on his face were snowflakes—they had days to go before reaching Canada on horseback! Not a moment to waste if they were to earn enough supplies to get them back on the move again. And for the first time Rafferty wondered if the weather would trap them before that detective caught up. It would be his luck.

  He crossed to the large pen where the woollybacks were milling about, bleating out their endless melody of boredom. Olga came around the side of the small sheep shed then, Maudie a few wary steps behind her, and he could see the concern on the woman’s weathered face.

  “Got one stumblin’ like ’e’s drunk,” she called out. “Poor little bugger, can’t hardly get ’is breath now!”

  Rafferty’s affinity for animals immediately overrode his misgivings about Olga and Karl. He vaulted neatly over the wood-slat fence and followed where she beckoned, his heart lurching when he saw the downed heap of fleece in the shed’s shadow. It couldn’t be a year old, judging by the size of it, and even from this distance he could hear the wheezing that would kill it unless he found the problem quickly.

  Maude sat down beside the lamb, whimpering anxiously, her tail aquiver as he approached.

  “Yeah, this one’s in a bad way, girl,” he said in a low voice as he knelt beside it. Months had passed since he’d tended a sick animal, but instinct told him to first check the animal’s throat with his finger.

  “Your dog singled him out for me,” Olga was saying. “With all of ’em huddled together to keep warm, I’d’ve never noticed ’im in time.”

  “Maudie’s good that way,” he agreed with quiet pride. He could feel no foreign object down the lamb’s gullet so he laid it on its side and began a brisk massage.

  “Come on, boy, we can do this,” he said in the low sing-song of days gone by. “Keep those lungs open until we figure out what else to do ... thatta boy . . . keep going now.

  It was then he felt another presence, and glanced up to see Amber, wide-eyed as she leaned on the fence. He wasn’t surprised that she’d shown up—whether because she’d sensed an urgent situation, or just needed to get out of that smelly house. He flashed her an appreciative smile and redoubled his efforts at massaging the lamb’s heaving sides.

  She watched, spellbound, as Rafferty—that dark, mustachioed desperado—worked with intense tenderness to keep the struggling lamb alive. His long fingers remained in constant motion, deep in the animal’s matted wool, and his low, reassuring words were the litany of a parent soothing a child. Amber suddenly realized that she was witnessing Jack at his finest, performing the miracles a stockman was called upon to do as a matter of course, with devotion written all over his face as he refused to give up.

  He had never looked stronger, or more radiantly masculine. Something welled up inside her as he stood the animal on failing legs with patient desperation: this man who’d been trained to carry out the law of the land had obviously found his true calling by accident! What was it she’d said that night in her tent—that he’d betrayed his innermost desires? Here was proof that Jack Rafferty had not only gone into the wrong profession, but that he couldn’t possibly kill any living creature! No matter how angry or drunk he was.

  This conviction nearly choked her. Tears rolled freely down her cheeks as she thought how right this man would look cradling a child in his arms, or teaching it to take its first faltering steps. Amber was suddenly so overwhelmed by her love for Rafferty that she was ready to bolt for the shadows so her tears wouldn’t embarrass her. What would Olga think of such unchecked feminine emotion?

  But suddenly appearances didn’t matter. Jack was kneeling over the lamb, keeping it off the ground by the power of his kneading fingers on either side of its ribcage. He was still crooning, as though words alone could pull the pitiful creature through. The lamb’s head hung limply. He was all but gone, it seemed.

  And then there was a belch, followed by a retching motion. Something popped out of the lamb’s throat and it sucked in a long, quavery breath. Rafferty paused long enough to wipe the sweat from his brow while Maude licked the little fellow as though she, too, felt the sublime joy of the moment.

  “Well I’ll be goddammed,” Olga muttered over the pale, conical object she’d picked up from the ground. “It’s a cabbage core. Threw it out here with the other scraps and the wrong sheep got to it first.”

  Rafferty rocked back into a squat to savor a deep satisfaction he hadn’t experienced in months. His dog was instinctively standing alongside the lamb to guide its first teetering steps, while Olga was thanking him from the bottom of a heart he’d never guessed she had. Yet it was Amber who held his attention. Amber with the huge dark eyes, knuckling away tears as though she’d been moved as never before.

  Mesmerized, he rose to go to her. She reached across the fence, desperate for the embrace he so wanted to share with her, and Jack held her so close he thought she might suffocate. “Why’re you crying?” he whispered. “It’s all in a day’s work, honey.”

  “Don’t expect me to believe that!” She pulled away with a loud sniffle, wanting to laugh and cry at the same time. “Why on earth did you go into law, when you’re so obviously suited for—”

  “I didn’t know any better at the time. I was pursuing somebody else’s dream for me, just like you said, Amber.”

  He thought he’d die on the spot from loving her so much—and he could certainly come to worse ends. Hungrily Jack tipped her mouth up to his, until the need for life and the yearning for her was fed, at least for the moment. She felt small and helpless in his arms, and the depth of her dependence upon him scared him silly.

  With a quiet gasp he ended the kiss, feeling the mute gaze of their hostess on his back. “I’ll have to tell you about Ma sometime,” he murmured, “about her plans for the only son out of five that survived. But right now, there’s other work to be done.”

  Chapter 19

  It was a cozier evening than Amber expected, perhaps because she was tired from scrubbing the dirt-caked floors and the other surfaces around the meager house. Jack, who’d repaired several stretches of fence, won their hostess over by offering to cook dinner—his way to avoid eating the cabbage Olga had prepared. After the three of them devoured a meal of bacon, corn dodgers, and preserved peaches, the large woman carried a plate upstairs to Karl.

  “Thank you for cooking,” Amber whispered as the two of them cleared the table.

  Rafferty grinned. “It’s my way of getting you to provide dessert, honey. It’ll be our first night in a bed for days—a chance for me to love you right.”

  The thought of just sleeping in a bed excited her, and cuddling up with this man, whose hands worked miracles, was a fine idea indeed. She could feel his gaze lingering on her as they finished in the kitchen. Visions of his lean, muscled body loving hers sent a radiance through her insides, and she was sure Olga could guess the reason behind her little smiles when she returned with Karl’s empty plate.

  “You say the dog shows off whilst you play your harmonica?” she asked, eyeing Maudie as she lapped the last of the scraps from a bowl.

  “Why, yes, she does. I’ll go upstairs and fetch it.”

  As the two women sat down near the fire, Amber found herself studying the woman from the corner of her eye. Without the male outerwear, Olga was almost attractive, despite her size. She had thick blond hair, which she tied back with a boot lace, and her face lit up each time the dog looked her way. Sh
e was still wearing pants and a heavy plaid shirt, but as cold as it was—and considering the work she did outdoors—Amber allowed that such attire was far more practical than her own skirts and filmy blouses.

  And at the first few notes from Jack’s harmonica, Olga grinned like a little girl. She clapped in time as the border collie danced on her hind legs, crowing with delight when Maude yipped and yowled on the choruses. The music was no doubt a rare treat in this woman’s isolated existence, and Amber could understand now why homesteaders might offer to take her away from that old buzzard upstairs. They got through “Oh, Susanna,” “Swannee River,” and “Buffalo Gals” before Rafferty finally refused another encore.

  “We’ve been a long time on the trail,” he explained with a secretive glance at Amber, “and if we’re to be of much help tomorrow, we’d best turn in. We truly appreciate your hospitality, Olga.”

  The woman looked away almost shyly, as though unaccustomed to gratitude. “Good to have a little comp’ny,” she replied in a low voice. “Karl’s so damn old he’s—well, not that I’m complainin’, but this ain’t no easy life I got m’self into. Sleep well, now.”

  Amber didn’t have to hear the hint twice. She preceded Rafferty up the groaning stairway, and when Maude was in the small, low-ceilinged room with them, Jack shut the door. “No doubt we’ll want to open this afterwards, so some heat’ll drift in.”

  “After what?” she asked demurely. The wind was whistling through the chinks in the wall, and she wasted little time letting her clothes drop before she scrambled beneath the blankets.

  Rafferty let out a low chuckle. Tired as he was, he’d been anticipating this moment all day . . . and every part of him was rising to the challenge of pleasing her. He lowered himself onto the lumpy feather mattress, scowling at the telltale creak of the ropes. But then Amber reached for him—an invitation he couldn’t deny just because they might get a little noisy. His lips found hers in the cool, velvety darkness and he leaned into her with a hunger that threatened to consume him.