Heart of the West

by Penelope Williamson

  The brush crackled as it parted and a man loomed against the lavender sky. She would have pitched headfirst into the river if he hadn't grabbed her shoulder. "Careful, Boston. You're about as goosey tonight as a colicky bronc."

  She lurched to her feet, nearly falling in the river again. "You startled me, Mr. Rafferty," she said, careful to keep her face composed even though she could feel heat rising in her cheeks. "But then, I have no doubt that startling me was precisely your intention."

  "There you go again, putting all sorts of nasty motivations behind my poor, misguided attempts at being the gentleman. What if my intention was simply to help you with the dishes...?"

  He fell silent as the willow brakes rustled loudly, this time across the river. He lifted his head, his nostrils quivering, like a hound fresh on the scent. He leaned into her, so close she felt the hot gust of his breath on her cheek. "Sssh. Can you smell him?"

  She couldn't smell anything, because she couldn't breathe. And she couldn't hear much of anything, either, because her heart was now beating right up into her ears. She hated this cowardice in herself and she tried to will it away. But it seemed that fear—of Indians and wild animals, of the wind and the loneliness—was part of a woman's lot out here.

  "Roachback," came Rafferty's whisper on another wash of warm breath. A shiver curled up her spine, raising the fine hair on her neck.

  "What?" she whispered back, the word a tight little squeak.

  He moved his lips closer to her ear. She not only felt the heat of his breath, she felt its moistness. His breath fogged her ear, like blowing on a windowpane. "Grizzly bear. Probably hungry."

  She swallowed the salty taste of panic. She remembered a picture she had seen in one of Shona's novels of a great shaggy humpbacked beast with teeth and claws as long and sharp as scimitars. She had to ask it, even if he laughed at her: "Do they eat... people?"

  His chin brushed up and down against her hair as he nodded. "Been known to. Most likely, though, he's after the choke-cherries."

  It crossed her mind to wonder how the chokecherry trees could be bearing fruit at the same time that they were blooming. But then the willow brakes rattled again and all coherent thought fled her head. She was sure she could actually feel her heart clubbing against her ribs.

  Mr. Rafferty was standing so close to her she could hear his breathing, slow and steady, while her breath came in short, scared pants. His quiet strength was comforting. She edged closer to him, her belly brushing against the hard, cold metal of the revolver at his hip.

  She turned her head. His profile looked chiseled from stone. The fading light glittered in his eyes. "Your gun?" she said softly.

  He turned his head. They stood so close together that the movement caused her mouth to accidentally brush his cheek. Startled, she jerked her head back.

  "Wouldn't do no good," he said, whispering still, "'cept to rile him even more. Takes a double-loaded scattergun to stop a grizzly. That and a prayer—"

  The willow brakes crackled and burst open. Clementine whirled to run and slammed into Rafferty's chest. His arms came around her and she burrowed into the warmth and strength of him. Into the smell of him that was Montana dust and horse and man.

  He stiffened and set her away from him. "Christ," he said on a ragged expulsion of breath.

  She clung to his shirt as she twisted her head around in time to see a beaver waddle across the rocky bank and slide into the water with a slap of his flat black tail. Stunned, she stared at the widening ripples in the river left by the diving beaver, until she felt Rafferty's chest rumble beneath her clenched fists and knew that he was laughing.

  She shoved past him, tripping over a rock in her haste to get away. He grabbed her arms. Her muscles, that had been so tight with fear, now quaked from the sudden release. For a moment the only thing that kept her from sliding to the ground was the grip of his hands.

  "Release me at once," she demanded, but her voice broke and trembled on the words.

  His breathing was fast and uneven, as if he'd just sprinted across the prairie. "My, my, do I hear the sound of starch cracking?"

  She pushed him away with the butts of both hands. But she only managed two steps before she swayed on her feet. She was still shaking so hard she was surprised he couldn't hear her bones rattling. She had let it be so easy for him to make an utter fool of her. Her tremulous voice echoed in her head: Do they eat people? The man's self-control must be astounding, that he hadn't burst into uproarious hilarity right then.

  Suddenly she felt something shatter inside her. She snatched a tin plate out of the wreck bucket and whirled, flinging it at his head.

  She missed him and struck a tree instead, and he laughed again, firing her anger like bellows to a forge. "Christ, Boston, you even throw like a greenhorn."

  "Go to blazes on a jackass, you arrogant swine!"

  "And you cuss like a greenhorn, too. But I reckon even a dumb cowboy like me can take a hint." He tipped his hat at her and sauntered away, cool and grinning, as if he were taking leave of her from her front parlor.

  She stood staring after him, her fists clenched at her sides, shuddering. For the whole of her life, a loss of control had always been met with the most terrible of punishments. Anger certainly was not a genteel emotion. But it had felt so good to throw the plate at his head. She wished he would come back so that she could throw it again and this time maybe flatten his nose with it.

  Gus materialized before her from out of the falling darkness. He picked up the plate and held it out to her. She couldn't see the expression on his face, but she could tell by the censorious quality of his silence that he'd witnessed at least the tail end of her temper tantrum.

  "I wish you two'd make more of an effort to get along," he finally said.

  She snatched the plate from his hands and tossed it into the wreck tub, even though it was coated with leaves and dirt. But the rage had left her now, leaving a burning in her chest. She pressed the back of her hand to her heated cheek.

  "Can't I love you," she said, "without liking him?"

  He stirred in the shadows and she thought she heard his breath catch. He took her hand, turning her palm to his mouth. His lips were warm, his mustache soft, tickling. "Do you love me, Clementine? You've never said the words before."

  I don't know, she wanted to cry. I think I do. I'm trying to love you, but I'm so afraid, so afraid. She couldn't explain that her feelings for him had somehow gotten all mixed up with how she felt about Montana and, in some strange way she only dimly understood, with how she felt about his brother. And how could she explain this need she felt to hoard the deepest parts of herself, to keep her woman's secrets and fears and hopes to herself and apart from him?

  Because the one thing seemed to lead to the other, although she wasn't sure in what way, she said, "I'd like for us to have a baby soon."

  He laughed softly and tugged on her hand, pulling her into his arms. "I'm doing everything I can to make sure that happens."

  Maybe it already had. She didn't know any of the signs and she was too embarrassed to ask Gus. She wished there was a woman she could talk to. But from the dim recesses of her memory she heard her mother's voice saying, "Never ask such naughty questions."

  Her head fell back and she rose up on her toes, turning her face to his. It began as a chaste brush of his lips across hers; then his mouth pressed down harder, and her lips moved, opening beneath his. She arched against him, pressing her suddenly aching breasts into the hardness of his chest as he sucked on her mouth and mated with her tongue. She dug her fingers into the muscles of his shoulders and felt him shudder. He pushed his aroused body into her belly, but when she moaned and rubbed against him, he thrust her away.

  "Not here, girl," he said. He was panting hard. "One of the others might come upon us."

  She wrapped her hands up in her skirt and stared at the ground. She felt such a burning shame she was glad of the dark that he couldn't see her face. "Of course not, Gus. It isn't proper."r />
  He expelled a loud, shaky breath. "No... It was my fault.

  It's just that the more I have you, the more I want you. I can't get enough of... of touching you," he amended at the last moment. But she knew what he'd been about to say. He couldn't get enough of what they did together in bed at night, and surely that was wicked. "He that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption." The marriage bed was for procreation not pleasure. And yet, wicked though it might be, there'd been times when she hadn't been able to remain still and ladylike in her marriage bed, when she had actually whimpered and squirmed and moaned because of the things he did to her body and the way it felt. Pleasure... oh, yes, there was undeniable pleasure in what a man could do to a woman with his lips and his hands and those parts of his body that made him uniquely a man.

  Clementine so embarrassed herself with the intimacy of these thoughts that she couldn't bear to look at her husband. She turned her hot face away from him while he picked up the wreck tub, tucking it under his arm. And she kept a careful distance from him as they walked together back to camp. Her muscles felt languid, heavy. She ached, wickedly, wantonly, for him to kiss her again. She wanted him to ease her down right there on the hard ground and make her whimper and squirm and moan.

  Sometime while they'd been at the river the last of the day had bled from the sky. The cookfire had sunk to a mound of white coals. A feeble glow came from a moth-haunted lantern hanging from the mess-wagon tongue. With the coming of the night, the air had turned cool. It was filled with the smell of burning cottonwood and the riffle of shuffling cards.

  Nash and Pogey were playing poker using dried beans for chips, and they barely glanced up when she and Gus returned. Rafferty lay stretched out flat, with his head on his saddle, his dog curled up nose to tail at his feet. She thought he was asleep until his hat brim tilted up and the lantern light caught the cold brassy shine of his eyes.

  Unconsciously she brought her fingers to her mouth. Her lips smarted as if scorched. It was the feel of his beard-roughened cheek that her lips remembered.

  She stood at the pasture fence a week later, her head held high, her gaze on the wide sky, looking out over the valley as if it were a promised land. And yet to him she seemed frail and achingly lost, standing alone as she was in that great rolling ocean of grass.

  Sometimes he wanted to stop the world and look at her forever.

  He ambled his horse up behind her, letting his eyes dwell on the way the wind played with a loose strand of her hair and pressed the skirt of her riding habit to her thighs. The way Gus's old hat cast a shadow on the sweet fairness of her cheek.

  "Mornin'," he said.

  She whipped around so fast her feet almost shot out from under her on the dew-wet ground, and she had to make a wild grab for the fence rail to keep herself upright. She pushed the hat out of her eyes with the back of her wrist and sighed. "Do you lie awake at night and plan it, Mr. Rafferty?"

  He twisted sideways in the saddle and hooked one leg over the horn. He got tobacco and papers out the pocket of his leather vest and started working on a cigarette. If she knew what he lay awake and thought of at night...

  He struck a match with his thumbnail, but he had trouble holding it steady. "What're you jawin' at me about this time, Boston?"

  "The way you're always sneaking up on me."

  "I wasn't sneaking," he said around the cigarette in his mouth. "Hell, I was making enough noise to stampede a plow horse. The fault's with those tenderfoot ears of yours. You probably couldn't hear the blast from a can of black powder if it went off under your hat." He squinted at her through wafting smoke. "Rumor has it you're ready to pick yourself out a horse."

  "I would rather Gus be the one to—"

  "He's busy. Which one do you fancy?"

  She swallowed and straightened her shoulders. She turned back toward the pasture. The horses were bunched at the east end of it. A hawk flew low overhead, casting a running shadow on the riffling grass. The herd, showing off for her, erupted into a collective canter, an earthy rainbow of bucks, tans, sorrels, and roans, manes and tails streaming, hooves flashing silver in the wet grass.

  "What about that spotted one?" she said.

  That spotted one. Jesus. He eyed the horse she was pointing at, a pinto that was mostly white with paintlike splotches of black on his rump and flanks. "You only like him 'cause he's flashy."

  She gave him a stubborn look. "He is the one I want, Mr. Rafferty."

  "Yes, ma'am." He ducked his head to hide a smile as he gathered up his lariat. The cayuse she'd chosen could be as ornery as hell, and he had a nasty habit of bogging his head and bucking the minute you straddled him.

  She opened the gate and came with him into the pasture. He showed off a bit himself, sidearming his loop and laying it neatly onto the pinto's neck without disturbing a hair. He led the cayuse up to her and then sat back and watched while she tried to make friends.

  The pinto, living up to his contrary nature, made a liar out of him by behaving sweet as a sugar-tit, nuzzling her with his muzzle while she stroked his neck. She was making a sort of purring noise deep in her throat that was as erotic as hell, and cooing on about what a pretty boy he was and how they were going to fly like the wind.

  She looked up at Rafferty with a smile so honest and real that he had to turn away from it. "Oh, I like him! Does he have a name?"

  He had several names—jughead, broomtail, and buzzard bait being the polite ones. "Why don't you name him?" he said. "Since you picked him out and all."

  Her face brightened even more, as if someone had just lit up all the candles in the world. "Very well. His name shall be Gayfeather, after the prairie flower."

  Rafferty made a snorting noise. "If I was a horse and someone stuck me with a name like that, I'd go looking for a cliff to jump off of."

  "Lucky you're not a horse, then, or I would name you Prickly Pear." And she laughed, her nose wrinkling, her teeth flashing white behind wet lips.

  He stared at her mouth long enough for her to know it, and for her lips to part and her breath to hitch. His gaze locked with hers, and it happened again—that invisible skein of lightning wrapped around them, catching them fast. Stopping the world.

  This time he was the one to break it. He slapped the loose end of his lariat against his thigh hard enough to sting. "Come on, Boston, let's saddle him up. I ain't got all day."

  She'd brought her tack out with her and had kept it out of the wet by slinging it over the top rail of the pasture fence. Rafferty shook his head now at the sight of it. He wondered where in hell Gus had found her a lady's saddle.

  "Jesus Christ and glory," he said. "i seen britches patches bigger than that scrap of leather."

  Small as the sidesaddle was, she still struggled with it, dragging the cinch along the ground, and she dropped the bridle twice before she got it on the pinto's bobbing head. Rafferty didn't make any move to help her. It was a good thing, he thought, that the grass was nice and soft. He figured she was going to become real intimate with that grass quick as her dainty little butt came in contact with her dainty little saddle.

  He grinned as he watched her try to mount. The pinto had rediscovered his true nature and was now performing little crow-hops while she jumped around on one foot after him, struggling to pull herself up into the moving saddle. Just as he'd predicted to himself, the moment her rump hit leather the horse bucked, and she shot straight up in the air. Her bootheel stuck in the stirrup for an instant, so that she landed flat-faced, her dainty nose plowing a furrow in the pasture. When she stood up, she stepped on her hat.

  The pinto snorted, shying backward. The reins started to slide out of her hands and she lunged, slipping and sliding. "Drat it all," she said. It wasn't exactly a shout, but it was awful damn close. "Stand still, you dreadful beast."

  "I gotta teach you how to cuss better."

  She bared her teeth at him. "Mr. Rafferty, will you kindly take yourself off to hell where you belong."

  He
matched her nasty little smile with one of his own. "'Pears like that spotted horse of yours likes to have himself a spree when the humor strikes him. You shoulda picked yourself out a nice, gentle hackamore colt like my Moses here. He's a real sugar-eater."

  "And come winter he's going to be mine."

  He almost laughed aloud. He liked it that she chose to hone the sassy edge of her gilded tongue on him. He had noticed that he was the only one so privileged.

  She wasn't giving up on the horse either. But no sooner did she hook her leg around the saddle bow then the pinto pitched, and she was sprawled on the grass again.

  He looked down at her and shook his head in mock sadness. "I'm thinkin' Hannah is going to look mighty fine in that brooch of yours. You gonna sit him this time?"

  She stood up slowly, wincing a little. She wiped her hands on her skirt and held her head high. "You just stand back and watch me, sir."

  The horse started crow-hopping again as soon as she put her foot in the stirrup, but somehow she managed to pull herself into the saddle. She clung to the horn for dear life. Her hat went flying, but she didn't. The pinto gave half a dozen little bucks, then quieted, lowering his head to pull on a clump of nettleleaf. She cast Rafferty a look of triumph.

  Her eyes, he thought, were greener than buffalo grass after the first spring rain. Her hair was the pale yellow of a winter sun. His fist clenched on the reins. Over the smell of sweating horses and tobacco and pine-spiced wind, he smelled her.

  "Not bad for a greenhorn," he said, his voice grating roughly. He seemed to have ground glass in his throat. "Next time, though, see if you can stick without grabbing for the apple." He leaned over and scooped her hat off the ground. "You give up yet, Boston? Bought yourself a train ticket heading east?"

  She took the hat from his hand and wedged it back on her head. "I intend to stick, Mr. Rafferty. Any way I have to." A smile flashed across her face, and he ached inside.

  Somehow their horses had wound up so close their stirrups rubbed together. So close his mouth was within a breath of hers. Her lips were cracked by the summer sun and wind. He wanted to wet them with his tongue. She was breathing hard, her eyes wide. A silence stretched between them, underscored by the crackling of grasshoppers and the moan of the wind.