Sweet Mountain Magic

by Rosanne Bittner

  Randy swallowed a piece of meat. “Then she remembered who she was?”

  Sage swallowed to find his voice. “She remembered. By then we had been living like man and wife. I intended to find us a preacher when we came down off that mountain and make it legal. I’ve never loved anything that much in my whole life, and probably never will again. But when she remembered who she was, she also remembered she had a husband, in Texas.”

  “Goddamn! Ain’t that just like the kind of luck men like us have?”

  Sage smiled sadly. “I reckon. At any rate, you can guess the rest. I had to bring her home, because she’s an honorable woman and wouldn’t have it any other way, and that’s partly what I loved about her. She thought her husband must be dead—he’d been shot in the back with a Comanche arrow. That’s how she ended up where I found her. Comanche took her, killed her little baby girl, raped her, then sold her to a whiskey trader who brought her north and was fixing to resell her to the Crow or Blackfoot. But the whiskey trader got killed himself, and the Indians left the woman beside their burning wagon. They didn’t touch her because they thought she was crazy and full of bad spirits. That was because by then her mind had left her and she didn’t do anything but sit and stare. It took me a long time to get her to talk and be a normal woman again.” He choked on the words. “Her name was Mary, and I’ll always think of her as Mary MacKenzie.”

  “Jeez, Sage, that’s really sad. The poor woman! And goin’ through all that with her and all—must have made you love each other that much more. I mean, you go through something like that with somebody, and it only makes you closer.”

  Sage frowned, a little surprised at the boy’s understanding. “You’ve got more heart than I gave you credit for,” he admitted then. “I didn’t really think you’d understand.”

  Randy grinned almost bashfully and shrugged. “Hell, I think about things, Sage—about life and love and all them things. It just isn’t often a man meets up with another man who he thinks would understand what goes on inside him. I’m right proud you told me about what happened. It means you consider me a pretty good friend.”

  Sage nodded. “I reckon I do. I had some good friends up Wyoming way. One was a white man and the other was an Indian—a Ute. I miss ole Red Dog. Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever see him again.”

  “Sure you will. You’ll go back some day because that’s what you love except for that woman. She went back with her husband then?”

  Sage sighed deeply, looking at the flames. “It was the only thing a woman like her could do—the right thing. But it won’t be easy for them, him knowing what she went through, knowing we loved each other. He seems like a good man, but I can’t help wondering if it can really work. I got no business hanging around making things harder on them, but if things don’t work out, what will she do? Where will she turn? She’d need me and I wouldn’t be there. Her husband was already talking about leaving Texas and starting over someplace new, so even if I wanted to find them later, I probably couldn’t.”

  He threw a small stick into the flames. “I still feel like I need to protect her, be there for her. It’s such a god-awful helpless feeling. And thinking of her…being with him…being his wife again…” He picked up a stone and threw it hard in his anger. “It makes me feel crazy sometimes,” he almost growled. He sighed and leaned back against his saddle. “But I can’t do a damned thing about it. She did the right thing, and that’s that. Now you know what I mean about some losses being worse than death. To have her still be alive, but not be able to be with her, it eats at me night and day.”

  Randy sighed. “Yeah, I can understand that. I’m real sorry for you, Sage. Is that why you’re goin’ to Mexico with me? To try to forget? To get real far away from her?”

  “I never said I’d go all the way down there with you. I’m still thinking on it.”

  He read the disappointment in Randy’s eyes. “Oh,” the young man said quietly. He shrugged. “No matter, I guess. I started out alone. I can finish the trip alone.”

  Sage shook his head. “Why don’t you come clean, Randy? You’re more lonely than you care to admit. I was that way once. I thought I could get by with nobody to call friend. But I learned different. If you want me to go—because you’re lonely and want a friend—then tell me so. You don’t have to act all high and mighty and independent around me. I’ve been in your shoes. You’re just a young Sage MacKenzie. There’s nothing wrong with showing some feelings. You just did a minute ago when you asked why I was in Texas. I saw some real feeling there. Now you’re pretending you’ve got no special feelings.” Sage shifted against his saddle. “I was that way once, after my folks were killed in a fire. It was easier to pretend I was strong and independent than to face their deaths and cry about it and admit how scared I really was.”

  Randy just stared at the fire for a long time, saying nothing. Then he swallowed, and Sage detected a trace of tears in the young man’s eyes. “It’s hard…to care about somebody,” he admitted then. “Like you said, a lot of times you just get hurt. It’s hard for me to make friends, because I don’t want to feel that hurt again…like I felt over my pa. I…” He stopped to clear his throat, then smiled nervously, quickly wiping his eyes. “I loved him, you know? I mean, I really loved him. He was my pa. But it seemed like nothing I did…ever pleased him. I reckon I’ll never understand why he hated me. He was always…hittin’ me…punchin’ me around like an old pillow. My ma, too. He hit her so many times. God, my poor mother…”

  His voice broke and he stopped for a moment. Sage waited quietly for him to compose himself. Randy took a deep breath before continuing. “That’s how I know about lovin’ and losin’ what you love,” he went on. “I never loved a woman like you loved Mary, but I did love my ma, and I sat beside her and watched her die one day, after Pa beat her. He told everybody else she died of pneumonia—buried her before anybody could see what she looked like. I wanted to tell…but he was my pa.” He shook his head. “Can you believe it? I knew he killed my ma, and yet because he was my father, I couldn’t bring myself to tell…because they would arrest…maybe hang him.” He cast tear-filled eyes in Sage’s direction. “The funny part is I never would have told…but my pa beat the hell out of me anyway, warnin’ me I’d better not ever tell anybody how she died. I loved him enough not to tell, and that’s how he answered my love.” He wiped his eyes again. “That’s when I run off. I never went back.” He sighed deeply. “Just before that my Negro friend was sold. I had nothin’ left.” He sniffed before continuing. “So that’s how I know about…about lovin’…carin’…losin’ everything you give a damn about. And like you, it makes it hard for me to let myself care again. Nobody wants to get hurt like that more than once.”

  He hung his head and Sage nodded. “I’m glad you told me, Randy. I’m real sorry about what happened. But it’s good you told me. A man likes to know about another man if he’s gonna be traveling with him and all—call him friend. I just wanted to know who the real Randy Lucas was, and now I know.” He sat up straighter, leaning closer and reaching around the edge of the camp fire. He put out his hand. “Now tell me honest. You want me to go to Mexico with you because you’re lonely and want a friend? Or do you really not give a damn, like you said earlier?”

  Randy pressed his lips tightly together, reaching out and grasping Sage’s hand. He swallowed before finally speaking, squeezing Sage’s hand tightly. “I want you to go with me because I’m lonely and want a friend.”

  Sage nodded and grinned. “Then I’ll go with you—all the way to Mexico City.” He let go of the boy’s hand then. “We’ll fight Santa Anna together. Hell, maybe we’ll even die together, but we’ll die with at least one good friend by our side and not die alone, right?”

  Randy grinned, sniffing and wiping his eyes again. “Right.”

  “I’ll see some new country, and maybe somehow Mary’s memory will fade enough that it’s not such torture for me.”

  Randy flashed Sage his devil-may-care smil
e once again. “Hell, we’ll find us some pretty Mexican senoritas and have a round with them. That will help.”

  Sage grinned and shook his head. “You can bed all the senoritas you want. I’ll do without for a while. There’s only one woman I want and I can’t have her. I’ve got no desires for any others—at least not now.”

  “Well, I sure wish it could be some other way for you, Sage, I really do.”

  “I know you do, and I appreciate it.” Sage leaned back again and pulled a buffalo robe up close around his neck. “We’d best get some sleep. We’ve got a lot of riding to do. If we don’t get our asses down there in time, we’ll miss all the excitement.”

  Randy nodded. “I reckon.” He crawled into his own bedroll, checking his rifle before settling down completely. “Sage?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You’ve fought a lot of Indians, you say?”

  “I’ve worried about my scalp a time or two.”

  “What about the Comanche? Could you handle them—dicker with them, I mean?”

  Sage thought about poor Mary. God, how awful it must have been for her! How much of it could Rafe or the others really understand?

  “I’m not familiar with the Comanche,” he answered. “But I hear tell they’re about the hardest to deal with of any of them. They’re a mean lot—not overly friendly by nature, if you know what I mean. I’m more used to dealin’ with the Crow and Blackfoot, the Utes and Shoshoni. I’ve had a few dealings with the Cheyenne and Sioux, and I’ve still got my scalp, if that’s any indication of how well I can dicker with them.”

  “I’m glad you’re along. I’ve never been in Indian country before.”

  “Well, if we run into any Comanche, you might find I’m not much help.”

  Randy grinned. “Well, you’re better than nothing.”

  Sage laughed lightly. “I’m not sure whether that’s a compliment or an insult. But the way I figure it, we’re pretty much south of Comanche country. Might run into a few Apache. They aren’t much better, I hear tell. But I think our biggest worry from here on is the Mexican Army. Do you think we’re in Mexico yet?”

  “We must be by now. When this war is over, all this territory just might be American soil. The Mexican border might lie a whole lot farther south.”

  “I reckon that’s possible. I heard once that maybe even California would end up belonging to the Americans.”

  “Me, too. You want to go there next? I’ve heard a lot of things about California—how pretty it is, warm and sunny all the time. There’s an ocean out there—the Pacific. You ever see it?”

  Again Mary’s memory floated through Sage in one rippling, painful wave. Mary would have liked to have seen something like that. If they had been together, he could take her there. Maybe they could have settled there. “Sure, I’ve seen it,” he answered aloud. “I was a scout, remember? I took a couple of wagon trains over the Sierras into California. And it’s just as pretty as people say it is. But I never stayed there. I always went back to the Rockies.”

  “Will you go there with me?”

  Sage brought a hand to his chest and began rubbing. “Sure. Why not? I’ve got nothing else to do now. I’ll go fight Mexicans with you and then we’ll go to California and you can see that ocean. You’d like California, and I’m just the man who can show you the way. I’ll be your guide.”

  Randy stared up into the black sky. “And my friend.”

  Sage closed his eyes. “And your friend,” he repeated.

  The ship rose and fell on stormy waves through the Gulf of Mexico. Normally these waters were calm, but the second day after Mary and Rafe set out for New Orleans, the storm had come.

  Mary sat up on the edge of the bed. Rafe had made sure they had one of the best cabins on the ship, but the cabin’s comfort did little against the tossing ship, or to help Mary’s nausea. She grasped the bucket she had kept on the floor beside the bed, and she vomited again. Her gagging woke Rafe and he quickly sat up, putting a hand on her shoulder.

  “Mary, if I had known ships make you sick, I’d have gone by land. I just thought this was the fastest way.”

  “It isn’t just the ship,” she panted, pushing back her hair with a shaking hand. Sage! She was going farther and farther away from Sage! The reality of all that had happened was sinking in, in all its cruel clarity. Sage was gone, and she was going far away, back to New Orleans, maybe St. Louis eventually. She would never see Sage again and she must face it.

  But the baby! The baby in her belly was not Rafe’s. It belonged to Sage, of that she was certain. He should know. Poor Sage should know he was going to have a son or a daughter. But she had to keep it all hidden, had to keep up this pretense.

  Rafe was being so good to her. He had been angry and almost forceful that first time, but she had understood why. He had apologized, and she had allowed their sex life to continue the way it had been before her abduction. Rafe was gentle, and he certainly knew how to make a woman respond. But he was not Sage. And it was not Rafe’s baby she carried in her womb.

  If only she could get over the feeling she was being bad when she slept with Rafe. After all, he was her husband. She was doing nothing wrong, and she was being the wife he deserved. But she was not being his wife in her heart, and she wondered if he sensed that. Since she had come back, he had not made love to her with the same eagerness and passion he had once showed. Nor did they make love as often as before, and always there were the questions in his eyes, as though he wondered if she were comparing him to someone else.

  “But it must be the ship,” he was saying.

  “Rafe, I was getting sick before we got on this ship,” she answered wearily. “I just didn’t let you see me. Now that we’re cramped into this little cabin together, I can’t very well hide it.”

  “Why should you hide it?” He sat down beside her, putting an arm around her shoulders.

  “I don’t know. I just don’t think it’s very exciting for a man to watch his wife throwing up. Could you please get me some water?”

  Rafe frowned, rising from the bed and holding on to the furniture as he walked to a dressing table and picked up a pitcher of water that sat in a recessed area to keep it from sliding off the dresser. The ship steadied itself for a moment and he quickly poured some water from the pitcher into a glass, then brought it over to Mary, spilling some when the ship lurched suddenly. He hurried to her side then, sitting down beside her again.

  “The storm has to end soon,” he told her reassuringly. “You’ll feel better then.”

  “I doubt it,” she answered, taking a swallow of water. She had been back ten weeks, and now they were on their way to live with Rafe’s parents in New Orleans until Rafe got a business set up somewhere new. At any rate, they had been back together long enough for her to tell him. “I’ve missed my period,” she said aloud. The real truth was she had missed two periods, and this was Sage’s baby. Somehow she had to make Rafe believe it was his. “I’m going to have another baby, Rafe.” She thought about the piece of life she and Sage had left buried in the mountains. Had that one been Sage’s, too?

  “A baby!” Rafe turned her to face him. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. I hope…I hope you’re happy about it, Rafe. I think it would be good for both of us to have another child, don’t you?”

  His eyes teared. “Mary, I’m so glad! But you should have told me. I never would have brought you on this long trip.”

  “It’s all right. I wanted to get out of Texas. Living there brings back too many memories of the abduction, Elizabeth, all of it.”

  He quelled an urge to ask her if she still pined away for Sage MacKenzie. Surely not. Her husband had made love to her, and now she was pregnant. Everything would be like it used to be. The baby would—He frowned, suddenly wondering. No, it couldn’t be! He would not even allow the thought. “When do you think it will be born, Mary?”

  She struggled with her emotions, refusing to meet his eyes. “I—I’m not sure. Next March, I guess. T
hat would be about nine months after we were reunited.” It was a lie. The baby would probably come in February. She would have to insist it was premature, and hope that Rafe believed her.

  “I’ll try to have us all settled by then, Mary,” he told her. “I’ll find us a house in St. Louis, and we can fix up one room just for the baby.”

  She nodded. Sage! Oh, how she would love this child, for it would be Sage’s baby. She would have a part of him that would be with her forever. But poor Sage would never know. He was left with nothing.

  “Oh, Rafe, I don’t want anything to happen to this one,” she cried.

  He pulled her close, kissing her hair. “Nothing will happen to it,” he answered. “God won’t take another child from us.”

  She wept against his chest, feeling sick with guilt that Rafe Cousteau would be raising a son or daughter not of his own blood. She was torn with indecision, loving him enough to realize he deserved the truth, yet afraid of how badly that truth would hurt him. He had been hurt enough. They both had. They must make this work. The baby would help.

  “You were right, Sage,” Randy said in a near whisper. They sat close together, surrounded by many other men. Some were volunteers in civilian clothes like Sage and Randy, but the majority were regular Army men in uniform. “This war ain’t what I thought it would be. If you want to know the truth, I’m scared about that attack tomorrow.”

  “Nothing wrong with being scared, Randy. You can bet the times I was surrounded by painted Crow or Blackfoot I was scared enough to piss. A man just doesn’t show it, that’s all. We do what we gotta do and we don’t back away from it.”