Buck leaned closer.
Annika lowered her lashes to shield herself from the intensity reflected in his eyes. She could feel his warm breath against her face.
He could feel her pulse racing beneath his fingertips.
And then Baby started to cry.
13
BABY’S cry was as effective as ice water. Buck and Annika turned toward her in unison and found the little girl tangled in the covers. She cried fitfully as she tried to free herself.
Instinctively, Buck started to reach for her, but since his hands were coated with bear grease he was unable to help. Annika leaned across the bed and soon had Baby unwrapped and comfortable, but the child still fretted with the covers.
“You have to keep the blankets on, Baby.” The unfamiliar raspy sound of Annika’s voice did little to soothe the child. Crawling toward Buck, Baby fought to escape the bedclothes again. Annika reached out and pulled her onto her lap.
“Let me just wrap you up, then I’ll wash my hands and take her from you,” he said.
Annika finally met his eyes. “She’s no trouble.”
Buck, whose face was aflame for the second time that day, gingerly wrapped the flannel swatch around Annika’s throat and then left mem to wash his hands.
“She’s so hot, Buck.”
“I know,” he said over his shoulder, trying hard not to let his worry show.
Annika smoothed Baby’s hair and tried to cover her again, but the child would have none of it. She began whining, although she seemed content to lay her head on Annika’s breast. Annika stroked the feverish brow and cuddled the child close.
“Buttons?” Baby sniffed. “Ankah’s buttons?”
“You can play with the buttons as soon as you feel better, all right?”
“Buttons?”
Buck came back to the bedside, this time carrying another cup of steaming liquid. “Willow bark tea,” he explained to Annika. “We have to get some down her to break the fever.”
“You have to let it cool some.”
He snapped, “I know that,” then set the cup down on an upended crate beside the bed and took Baby from her. The child quieted immediately. His expression suddenly grew serious as he patted the little girl on the back. All the while he stared at Annika.
“When the pass clears...” he began.
She waited expectantly as he collected his thoughts.
“When the pass clears and I take you down the mountain, I want you to keep Baby with you.”
“Keep her with me? What do you mean?”
She watched the muscles of his face work as he fought to say the words, saw the tic at the side of his jaw and the flash of pain in his eyes. “Keep her. Raise her. She likes you.”
Her reply was barely a whisper. “Keep her?”
He could only nod.
“Oh, Buck! I can’t do that.”
“You don’t want her?”
“I couldn’t take her from you. She’s yours, your blood relation. I know how much you love her.”
He tried to deny it with a shake of his head. “She’s never been anything but trouble. She’ll be better off away from here. I know that now.”
Stunned, Annika tried to fathom the reason behind the words that did not fit the sorrow on his face or the defeated slump of his shoulders. He tried to deny his love for the child even as his strong, work-worn hands toyed with the edge of Baby’s simple gown.
“You’re afraid,” she said.
He looked up quickly, as if to deny her words. “I almost lost her today. I’d rather give her up than have something happen to her.”
“Buck...”
“This is no life for a child and no place to raise one. Baby’ll never have friends or know anyone except hunters like Old Ted, and some of them aren’t fit to talk to. She needs a chance.”
“What about her mother? Maybe if she knew Baby, if she saw her, it might be just what she needs to bring her around to reality. When was the last time she saw Baby?” Annika wondered how any mother who laid eyes on the angelic face of the child could refuse to claim her.
He shook his head. “Baby was two months old. Patsy was pregnant when her man died. She went insane and stayed that way. I thought when she had Baby it would help her, but it only made her worse. That’s why I had to take her away. Ted found the old woman to care for her and I haven’t seen her since I left her there.”
“But maybe she’s all right now. Maybe she’s recovered her senses. It might have just been shock.”
He looked doubtful. With a shake of his head he said, “I don’t think so. Anyway, I can’t take that chance and put Baby in danger.”
The pain at her temple had worsened. Annika closed her eyes and when she opened them, Buck had already slipped the sleeping child beneath the covers again.
“What about her tea? It looks cool now.”
He stepped away from the bed. “Sleep will do her more good. We can try the tea later. What about my question?”
“You don’t really want me to agree to your plan. No matter what you say, I know you love that child, Buck Scott. Why, you were willing to marry a perfect stranger just to have someone to care for her.”
“But now I know I was wrong,” he admitted. “This morning I almost got you both killed. No woman in her right mind deserves this kind of isolated life. Baby deserves better, too.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and walked across the room. Standing before the fireplace, he put his fist against the mantel and studied the fire.
“You think about it,” he said. “I won’t press you. But if you don’t keep her, I’ll just have to find someone who will.”
Two days later, Annika refused to stay in bed any longer. Buck had tended to her sore throat and Baby’s fever day and night without thought for his own comfort or health. Finally, when he looked tired enough to drop, Annika took a stand.
“Do you want to make yourself sick in the bargain or can you use some common sense and let me get up and take care of her so that you can rest? Now please, get me the rest of my clothes.”
He looked hesitant at first but after a moment’s thought, he handed her the chocolate wool traveling suit and did not apologize for the handful of shining round buttons he poured into her hands. She eyed him skeptically, trying not to imagine him ripping her jacket open.
Without a word he brought her the cigar box full of sewing implements and Annika set to work replacing the buttons. Sewing had never been one of her accomplishments, but she thought even she could finish such an easy task until the thread knotted of its own accord and she groaned in frustration.
“If it will get you up and out of there so I can stretch out for a few minutes, I’ll finish that for you.” Buck stood over her, ready to accept the chore.
“Gladly.”
“Your mother never taught you to sew?”
“She tried, but she was a seamstress before she married my father. I was always too slow. She would end up finishing everything for me.”
He sat down on the edge of the bed and put the jacket in his lap. Lifting the needle to the light, he carefully wet the thread, then slipped it through the needle’s eye. Slowly, patiently, he began to sew on the remaining buttons. He didn’t look up when he asked, “Storm’s not your real brother, is he?”
Annika wondered where his conversation was leading. “He’s my half brother. We have the same mother.”
“But he’s a half-breed.”
She went ominously still.
Buck looked up from his work.
“Then so am I,” she said quietly.
“I don’t believe it. You don’t look it.”
“Actually, I’m only a quarter Sioux. My mother is Dutch, my father is half Sioux.”
He was quiet again for a time, as if mulling over what she had said.
Annika explained further. “Kase’s father was full-blooded Sioux. He died before Kase was born.” It was the truth as she knew it, for her mother never spoke to her of Kase’s father, except to say that i
t made her very sad to think of him and those years before she met Caleb. If Kase knew more about his heritage, he had never told her of it, but she often wondered about the reason why he left home so abruptly five years ago and the explosive argument he had with Caleb the day before he disappeared. Both Caleb and Analisa had told her it was something Kase Would have to tell her about if he wanted her to know. She respected their decision.
“So you and Storm grew up together?”
“That’s right, and as far as I’m concerned, he’s my brother. We’re very close.”
“Except for the fact that he lives outside Cheyenne now and you live in Boston.”
“He has a right to his own life.”
Buck was silent for a time, then said, “I wish like hell you hadn’t been on the train that day.”
Annika thought about his statement. “If you’re worried about Kase, don’t be. As soon as we get to his ranch, I’ll simply explain everything to him.”
He looked up at the word we.
“I will, I promise.”
“I’m real sorry all this has happened, Annika. Do you believe me?”
Something warmed inside her at his use of her given name. “I know that.” She looked down at her hands before she met his gaze again. “If we’re going to start apologizing, I think I need to say that I’m sorry for the shrewish way I’ve acted up until now.”
He put down the jacket and shrugged, a half smile playing at the corners of his mouth. “I guess you acted like any Godfearing woman might who was carried off by such a no-account crazy man.”
“Don’t speak ill of yourself, Buck.”
“Why not, when it’s the truth?”
“It’s an idea you seemed determined to cling to. Why is that?”
He spread his hands wide. “I told you before, this is all I am. Hunting, trapping, skinning—it’s all a part of me and I’m part of it. If I’m not a buffalo hunter, what am I?”
She leaned toward him and said softly, “Whatever you want to be.”
He crumpled the jacket in his hands. The sincerity in her eyes made it almost easy to believe her.
Annika reached out and pulled him close. When she pressed a chaste kiss to his lips she was as surprised as he. She almost put her hands over her face, but instead she met his startled expression and raised her chin a notch.
“Don’t get any ideas, Buck Scott. That was for your apology, nothing more.”
“Maybe I should apologize more often,” he said with an easy smile.
She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
Buck handed her the jacket and stood up. It was a long time before either of them said another word.
THAT night, Baby took a turn for the worse. The fever that had plagued her for two days rose until the child went into convulsions. Buck wasted no time as he carried her out into the snow and buried her in it to force her temperature down. Baby’s lips were blue, her teeth chattering before he brought her in again. She hovered on the edge of consciousness. Her weak cries for Buck, for “Ankah,” and demands to see the precious buttons faded until she lay exhausted from her long, two-day battle.
Night had come again but Buck had refused to sleep, even for a few minutes. Annika did the best she could to prepare an elk stew as he watched over Baby and dictated directions to her. By the time the savory concoction was finished, she even felt like having a bowl of it herself, her aversion to meat gone.
“You have to eat,” she said, standing behind Buck, ready to take over the task of sponging down the child with tepid water.
He remained hunched over Baby, seated on a barrel stool he’d drawn up beside the bed. “I can’t.”
“You look like hell,” she said.
The comment gained her a look.
Annika nodded. “Well, you do, damn it.”
“Cursing now, Miss Storm?”
“Let’s keep it ‘Annika,’ shall we? Now go sit down and eat.”
“I’m really not hungry. Not now anyway.”
Annika went down on her knees beside him. “Buck, you’ve done everything you can. You’ve poured tea down her, made horehound syrup, put a mustard plaster on her chest. A doctor couldn’t have done any more. Now all you can do is trust in God.”
“That’s never worked for me before.”
“Try it. And let me help.”
He gave up, handed her the wet rag he used to swab the child down, and shuffled to the table to eat the stew and biscuits she had laid out for him.
Baby’s eyes were closed, the skin of her eyelids so fragile that every vein showed on them. She was a perfect little girl, a creature unlike anyone he had ever known. Innocent, endearing, no one was ever a stranger to Baby. If he were to lose her now through his own negligence, he didn’t know what would become of him.
Buck pushed aside the bowl, folded his arms on the table, pressed his face into the crook of his arm and did something he had not done in years. He prayed.
THE cold light of another Rocky Mountain dawn crept between the cracks in the shutters that barred the windows of the cabin. The air inside was close and heavy, the smell of sickness filled the room. A half-eaten bowl of stew, a layer of grease congealed on the surface, sat on the table near Buck’s elbow. At Baby’s bedside, Annika dozed, still seated on the uncomfortable barrel stool with her head and shoulders on the bed. The fire had burned itself out sometime during the night, the chill in the air grew rapidly.
Tired of foraging in the snow, one of the mules brayed for its breakfast of oats. The sound woke Annika. She blinked the sleep from her eyes, pushed back the wayward strands of hair that fell across her face, and promptly turned to care for Baby. As she reached out to her, the child was so still, so very peaceful, that Annika expected to find the once healthy, glowing skin cold with the chill of death. Please, God, no, she thought. Let the child live.
Baby’s skin was cool to the touch, but far from cold. Sweat rimmed her hairline, dampening the mass of golden curls. Sometime during the night, the fever had broken. Anxious to tell Buck, Annika stood up and stretched to get the kinks out of her back.
She rubbed her arms against the chill in the room and then drew her cape on over her nightgown. The mule outside was still raising a ruckus, but it was not enough to awaken Buck. Annika stood behind him, tempted to reach out and smooth the tangled curls off his forehead much the way she had Baby’s. He had fallen asleep before he could finish his meal, finally giving in to the exhaustion he had long held at bay. She wondered if she should go out and feed the noisy creature herself, then realized he would be as relieved as she was when he learned that the crisis had passed. He needed to know.
She reached out to touch him on the shoulder and thought of the night she had hesitated to do so when he was asleep in the tub. The sight of him hunched over the table, even in sleep, exuded strength. Tentatively, she laid her hand on his shoulder.
He did not stir.
She shook him slightly, aware of the feel of his rough shirt beneath her palm and the warmth of his skin beneath it.
He sat up abruptly, shaking off sleep like a grizzly. He grabbed her hand. “Baby?”
Annika smiled. “She’s going to be fine. The fever broke.”
Unwilling to believe without seeing, Buck rushed to the bedside and reached over to feel Baby’s forehead. As relief overwhelmed him, he knew he had to leave the room or make a fool of himself in front of Annika. He turned away without looking at her, walked to the door, and took his jacket down off the peg.
In a choked voice he managed, “I’ll be right back. I gotta see to that blamed mule.”
Annika watched the big man leave through her own tears.
VIRGIL Clemmens stared at the reward poster in his hands and knew that this was his lucky day. His grimy, dirt-stained fingers rubbed the edges of the page as if feeling it would reassure him that the poster was real. At the sound of approaching hoofbeats outside the ramshackle clapboard house, he carefully folded the poster along the creases he’d made earlie
r and tucked it inside his jacket. A little drama would add to the moment.
Boot heels rang hollow on the porch. A quick knock served as his only warning before the door swung inward and Clifton Wiley strode in followed by Denton Matthews. The two of them made the oddest pair that Virge had ever seen. Cliff was as tall and thin as a beanpole, while Denton was as short and round as a cracker barrel. The two had ridden together for years now, or so they’d claimed when Virge joined up with them a month ago, and although he knew he was nothing to look at—not since his ten-year stay in prison—he thought he was a damned sight handsomer than either of the other two, even if his beard had gone gray and he did have only six good teeth left.
“See you’re workin’ your butt off again, Virge, while we’re out lookin’ for a way to make a little cash.” Cliff folded his lanky form into a chair opposite Virgil’s. The lopsided table stood in the middle of the otherwise empty parlor of a deserted house on the outskirts of Cheyenne.
Denton grunted, which was all the comment Denton usually cared to make on almost any subject. Bowlegged, he walked like a man riding a camel across the desert. He rolled his way past the other two and shuffled into the tiny kitchen at the back of the house.
“While you two been out in the cold runnin’ your asses around in circles lookin’ to make a dime or two, I been studyin’ a way of comin’ up with some real money,” Virge said.
Cliff tilted his chair until the back of it rested against the wall and the two front legs were off the ground. He pulled off his dented hat and tossed it on the table. The sweatband had left an angry mark around his forehead. “And what might this grand plan be?”
Before Virge answered, Denton strolled back in from the kitchen with a handful of crackers. He pulled up his pants and hefted his bulk into the only other chair with four even legs on it and leaned as close to the table as his girth would allow. “You got a plan, Virge?”
“I got a plan, and she’s a doozie.” With a long pause intended to let their curiosity heighten, Virge opened his denim jacket and reached inside. Slowly withdrawing the poster, he made a great show of unfolding it and then smoothed it out on the table so that it would lie flat.
Come Spring Page 19
