Beth had also set herself a goal to go through the trunks and the locked boxes in the bedroom loft, although she still had very little free time. Garret seemed to have an unerring ability to know when she went into their new bedroom. Her husband took her need for a few minutes of privacy as a direct invitation to enjoy his wife’s body. She didn’t mind really, except she had burned two of the last three batches of bread she had tried to bake.
Beth was secretly marking off the days in her journal. It was too soon to tell, but she thought her husband’s prowess under the blankets might have already produced the results they wanted.
As the trees went bare, and the bushes and plants died, snow flurries were common. Beth was kept busy sorting through the quilts she had found in the trunks and patching them for winter use.
Captain Sumners dispatched a military courier to deliver the news to Garret about the three men. The Clinton brothers and Beale had been tried in a military tribunal, but they were not hanged. Instead, they were sent to Fort Laramie to spend ten years of hard labor in the military prison. Since Chief Red Cloud had declared war on the U.S. Army, the chances of transporting them to the Fort and them surviving the trip was unlikely.
Everything on their little ranch seemed to be slowing down. With the crops harvested, there should have been less work to do and yet Garret and Jasper still kept busy splitting wood by the cord.
It snowed on the first day of November. It was less than an inch and melted off in a few hours later after the sun broke through the clouds. Garret took it as a sure sign of winter. He brought the cross saw into the cabin and created a doorway from the original cabin room through to the bedroom. He spent the next day building a thick door with an inside lock. When he was finished, he gathered his tools and passed them to Jasper for him to return to the barn. He caught Beth around the waist and hustled her into the bedroom where he sat her down on the bed.
“Garret, we can’t,” Beth exclaimed. “He might be back any second!”
“I’ll take care of you later,” Garret remonstrated with a grin. “Right now, I’m going across to Jasper’s room. I want you to moan and gasp and carry-on making the noises you usually do when we’re doing it.”
“Garret!”
“I need to see if the sound will carry.”
“Then you get in bed and shout Hell’s Bells and groan like you do,” Beth whispered furiously flouncing across the room. She returned to the kitchen as Garret began to make the most embarrassing noises at the top of his lungs in addition to shouting Hell’s Bells. He was panting and hollering, “Oh, yes! Oh, yes, that’s the spot! Do it harder! Oh, that feels sooo… good!”
With her face flaming red because those were her words, Beth ran across the cabin into the bedroom, grabbed a pillow, and hit him with it.
“Stop it! Don’t you dare make fun of me!”
Garret was laughing as he caught her and swung her up into his arms before depositing her on the bed and rolling on top of her. He jostled the bed until the bedsprings were squeaking and the headboard was banging against the logs.
“Could you hear me?”
“They probably heard you all the way in Denver,” Beth huffed.
Garret laughed and kissed her. “Did you hear anything before I started hollering Oh, yes! Oh, yes!”
“No, I didn’t,” she huffed.”
“Then we’re safe,” he said kissing her again. “I was pretty loud before, so whatever we do, I don’t think Jasper will hear us.” He rolled off his wife and pulled her to her feet. “Don’t you ever stop making those noises. It lets me know you’re enjoying yourself and me.”
“Are you sure you were making noises?” Beth demanded.
“Yes, darling,” Garret teased. “A lot louder than you do. Now, get to it woman, you have a mess of sawdust to sweep up.”
“Why do I have to sweep it?” Beth demanded. “You made the mess!”
“Yes, I did,” Garret admitted. “All right, I’ll take a broom to the sawdust. Although, then I won’t be able to get around to tightening this bed. Jasper might not hear us, but he probably will hear the bed banging against the wall.”
“Never mind!” Beth said scooting out of the room. “I’ll sweep up, but if my latest batch of bread tastes like sawdust, don’t blame me!”
Garret went outside returning with a hand drill and several long pegs. Beth smirked when it took him a whole lot longer to complete his task of tightening the bed than it did for her to sweep the sawdust into the cracks of the wooden floor. She hoped it would keep the wind from coming in through the cracks. She was none too pleased when she realized Garret had left another mess in the bedroom for her to clean. Cleaning and cooking seemed to be her lot in life. Neither Garret nor Jasper seemed to be capable of noticing dirt, and they outnumbered her.
Several weeks later, they awakened to snowfall. This one was more significant at nearly a foot. Beth thought it was a good test for the upcoming winter as the cabin was warm and cozy.
After he had completed his chores, Garret commandeered the kitchen table to clean their rifles and his revolver. There was a loud banging on the door, which flew open revealing Black Crow and two warriors. This time, they wore no war paint and were dressed in buckskins and heavy buffalo robes.
Beth backed away, glanced at the disassembled weapons on the table, and grabbed her largest knife.
“My friend,” Black Crow said in greeting as he and Garret gave each other some kind of arm shake, which involved the two men pulling together and grasping the arm of each other all the way to the elbow.
“Black Crow, this is my wife, Beth, and my boy Jasper,” Garret said introducing them. “Would you like a smoke? I have tobacco.”
Black Crow shook his head and nodded to his two men who left the doorway.
“I owe you, my friend, and I am here to pay a debt long past due. Chief Black Bear has surrendered and agreed to leave our lands. He will join the Cheyenne and other tribes to go to what your people call the Indian Territory. Our people are being herded like your cattle onto land, not of our ancestors.”
“Are you going with them?” Garret asked.
Black Crow shook his head. “No. I am joining Red Cloud. He will lead our people.”
“It may be a fight you can’t win,” Garret said.
Black Crow stood silent for a moment. “You speak the truth. If so, I will die in the fight.”
The cabin door opened again. This time, the two warriors carried in an enormous elk and dumped it on the floor.
“I give this to you,” Black Crow said to Garret. “I have not forgotten the winter when you brought my people meat. If you go into the valley of the waterfall two peaks north, you will find elk, bear, and deer. There is still plenty for your survival. Your family is under my protection, you should not be bothered.”
“I saw it,” Garret said. “Thank you.”
“Your woman stands tall,” Black Crow said nodding to Beth approvingly.
Garret gave Black Crow a plug of tobacco and a pipe he rarely smoked. Having said and done what they needed to do, the Arapaho warriors left as quickly as they came.
Beth was still standing slightly behind her husband with her hands gripped around a large butcher knife. She put it down on the table and swallowed as she saw the massive bull elk with a rack of antlers filling a huge portion of her kitchen.
“How will you get the elk out of here?” she asked.
“They brought it in, so we should be able to get it out,” Garret said measuring the animal with his eyes. “It appears to be about seven hundred pounds of meat on the hoof. Come on Jasper, I think we’ll have to get a horse and drag it to the barn.”
Beth put a hand on her husband’s arm to stop him. “What did Black Crow mean by saying I stand tall?”
He lifted her chin. “He meant you are a brave woman.”
“I was terrified.”
“You stood by my side,” Garret said approvingly.
Garret and Jasper attended to the elk. Garr
et strung it from the barn rafters and let it hang there while he and Jasper spent the better part of a day building a smoke house with a stone base several hundred yards from the cabin. He cut large portions of elk, salted them, and hung them in the small building. He showed both Jasper and Beth how to keep feeding the rock-built fire pit outside so it would channel the smoke inside through short chimneys.
He also built a meat cache, which was really a small log cabin on stilts. He said it had to be sturdy enough to withstand a bear trying to climb it.
Beth did her part using every crock she could lay her hands on for salt brining.
“We certainly won’t starve this winter,” Garret declared at the end of several hard days’ work.
“I’m almost looking forward to being snowed in,” Beth said as she climbed into bed exhausted.
Garret opened one already closed eye and gave her a warning smack across her bottom. “Don’t say things like that out loud. You’re tempting the fates!”
***
“Awww!” Beth squealed as her husband slid under the covers and touched her with his cold hands.
“This is your fault,” Garret teased as he continued to rub his hands on her flannel nightgown.
“You can’t blame the cold on me! You were the one who bought the property and moved us here!”
“It was a deal I couldn’t pass on. Even then, it took every cent I had. I think I’ll install the old kitchen stove in here,” Garret said. “At least we will get heat at night.”
“We would get heat from the new kitchen stove if you would leave the door open to the other room,” Beth said shivering.
He shook his head and peeled the nightgown over her head. “We have to keep the door closed so Jasper won’t hear us. I know how to keep you warm.”
“We have to get up,” Beth said an hour later.
“Why? The chores are done,” Garret grumbled.
“I have to feed you and bake you a birthday cake for tomorrow. I don’t have a gift for you.”
“Stay in bed with me,” Garret said. “All day.”
“I can’t. What would I do all day?”
“Make love to me,” Garret said urgently. “It would be your gift to me.”
“What about Jasper?”
“I’ll tell him you’re sick, and I want you to stay in bed, which I do,” Garret insisted. “I will do your chores and install the small stove in here today, so this room will be toasty warm. Give me the gift of you tomorrow.”
“You have me all the time,” Beth protested.
Garret lay back against his pillow and propped his arm under his head. “What we have is special Beth, but what I want is a dream I had for a long time. Months after I left you the first time, I dreamed of coming back to you and being with you. You were stuck in my mind and my loins. I think it was those memories and dreams, which kept me going through some of those tough times.
“I even had them after your brother told me you were promised to another man. I wanted to kill Howell for sending me out to scout so soon after we married. I dreamed of you in my bed, naked and waiting for me, of being there for me. Do you think I’m depraved?”
Beth shook her head. “I dreamed of you too, except my hopes were more of the ‘knight in shining armor’ kind. I wanted you to be my hero and come back and rescue me, and you did. I will grant your birthday wish.”
“Really?”
She nodded and then she blushed and whispered. “This has to be our secret.”
“Honey, this is only between you and me,” her husband promised.
Garret’s birthday present began with an energetic sexual romp in their bed. With the small kitchen stove in their bedroom and the heat they were producing under the covers, he had to open a wooden window shutter for the fresh air to cool down the room.
Beth was enjoying her husband’s birthday. She had not had a day off in years when she did not have to work or wait on someone else. Garret delivered her breakfast in bed and, true to his fantasy, she ate it stark naked and waited for him.
She made her husband promise to keep Jasper occupied and out of the cabin most of the day, which he did by giving the boy the chore of building some small game traps.
When her husband was absent from the room, Beth spent her time reading old newspapers and one of the precious books she had found in a trunk. When she would hear the door rattle, she would call out to make sure it was her husband. When she heard his response, she would uncover herself and stretch out on the bed in what she thought would be an enticing pose.
Although Beth was having a day in bed, Garret still had chores to attend. She kept her promise though and was there for him every time he returned to the cabin. He had to keep the stove stoked and knew he was wasteful in constantly burning wood to keep the room heated, but it was worth it. He would chop wood until he dropped, but he would never forget this birthday gift from Beth. She never once balked at what he asked of her. By late evening, when she emerged from their room fully dressed and glowing rosy pink from the orgasms he had given her all day, Garret was incapable of raising another hard-on if his life depended on it.
Beth sensed his exhaustion, so she brought out his cake from hiding, and they celebrated his birthday around the kitchen table with Jasper, enjoying cake and milk.
Later, Beth hung up her dress, slid into bed beside her husband, and kissed him. He spooned into her, and she wiggled her butt against him, except he only chuckled.
“It ain’t happening, darling. You have worn me out.”
She giggled and turned in his arms, her nipples brushing across his chest.
Garret opened one eye and smiled at her antics as he rubbed a thumb over the tip of a nipple. “Darling, is it my imagination or are you growing?”
“I am growing a little bit,” Beth admitted. “I’ve also gained some weight. My dresses are getting a bit snug across my top and too tight in the waistline.”
“I wish I had known before I went to Denver.”
“I have lots of dresses since I kept the best of what was abandoned. I can fix another to fit me.”
“Good. You’ve been on the thin side ever since I met you. A few extra pounds will look good on you and give me more to love.”
Chapter Ten
Winter on the high plains could only be described as unpredictable and damn cold. As the months passed slowly, snow covered the mountain peaks in the distance. They were beautiful, but Beth was glad they were no closer to them. They would go through a few weeks of freezing temperatures and biting cold winds, and then they would get a taste of spring or even summer as the snow quickly melted off and the creeks flooded.
There was a lot less for Garret and Jasper to do during the winter months beyond keeping account of the cattle and attending to them, and the never-ending chore of splitting wood. They also set out trap lines, which had to be checked daily since wolves and bears would try to break open the traps.
Beth’s world mostly consisted of the small space in her kitchen. She kept busy preparing three meals a day, and sewing, mending, and washing dirty clothes repeatedly. It was her never-ending daily routine. She found herself trying to follow the old practices of her mother and Lettie’s mother who had assumed the running of the household after Beth’s mother had died.
Monday was washday. Tuesday was ironing day and darn it, hadn’t she found five flat irons while uncovering household items in the barn. She had never liked ironing and limited her use of the flat irons to only what was absolutely necessary. Wednesday was the day for mending, yet she often could not wait, as Garret and Jasper were hard on their clothing. They were forever ripping and tearing their shirts and pants. Thursday was traditionally the day for overall housecleaning, but Beth cleaned every day as she only had two rooms and the lean-to space. It was a point of pride to keep her house clean. Friday was supposed to be a shopping day, except there was nowhere to shop. She supposed going to the root cellar could be considered shopping if she stretched her imagination a bit. Saturday was traditi
onally a cooking day to prepare for the Sunday Sabbath. Beth cooked every day. Sunday was no different from her other days, except for a short reading of the Bible in the morning. As far as she knew, there was no real church within a hundred miles.
For all the tedium of her routines, she was happy. She had a husband she adored and a boy who may not have been theirs, but who they had grown to love as if he were.
Jasper was growing up, not only in size, but also in deportment and respect. He had become more helpful and much more of a gentleman under the guidance of Garret. If he saw Beth carrying a bucket or lifting something, he came to her aid immediately without asking.
The boy did grow out of his clothes and boots, though. His new trousers had risen six inches above his ankles, and the sleeves of his shirts were nowhere near his wrists. He had begun to limp because his feet were blistered from wearing boots that were too small. Beth had gone into the barn loft and searched through the trunks of clothing she had set aside as worthy of keeping. She outfitted the boy in men’s clothing and gave him a pair of Garret’s old boots to wear, which would fit if he wore several pairs of socks.
Beth did not bore easily, yet one day she found herself rereading a book she had already read three times. Although it was a rarity, she was caught up with all her housework and chores. Garret and Jasper were out checking their trap lines, so she had a few hours to spare. She went out to the barn and brought back a ladder. She had meant to find out what was in the trunks and boxes stored in the loft over their bedroom and now seemed the perfect opportunity.
She stoked the fire in the stove in the bedroom before taking a hammer and a chisel, and climbing into the loft to begin the process of breaking open the trunk locks. It was a project she kept trying to get to but other things always needed to be done first. It was a sort of a scavenger hunt because what some might consider valuable enough to lock away, others would see as worthless.
She set aside the books she found in a precious pile, which to her delight was growing. She would keep all the books because they were dear to her. Beth felt if someone wrote a book worthy enough to be bound and printed, it must be worthwhile reading. She had a small pile of silver odds and ends, several watches, and a growing selection of small clocks. She thought it strange she found very few family tintypes or photographs. It took a while for her to realize that, although people could discard their belongings, they were not willing to sacrifice their family mementos. Tintypes and memories were often all people had of the family and loved ones left behind. She knew it to be true because she wore a locket containing snippets of her mother and father’s hair. The only reason she still had the locket was because she was wearing it the day her home had burned.
A Path Worth Taking Page 15
