Holt's Gamble (21 page)

Two feet.
The water exploded and blew the black serpent apart in two pieces, raining blood and bits of flesh down on the wagon. Kierin stared down at the cold gun in her hand in disbelief, then up at Jacob.

His eyes were closed and his throat worked up and down convulsively. Shock had turned his dark skin to pasty gray and she knew it mattered not a bit to him
who
had fired that shot.

Clay reached them as she lowered the pistol. "By God, what a shot!" he shouted. Gingerly, he inspected the severed head of the snake and let out a low whistle. "Cottonmouth," he said, revealing the starkly white interior of the snake's mouth. He gave her a puzzled frown. "I thought you said you couldn't shoot a gun."

"I can't..." she murmured, confusion etched on her face. "I didn't—I mean I was going to but—"

"Haw, haw, haw!"

Kierin's head snapped around at the sound of the raucous laughter from the eastern shore, audible even over the rush of the river. On the far bank, she saw a tall, gray-bearded trapper slapping his knee in a fit of glee. Beside him stood a two-wheeled cart hitched to two pairs of mules, half in and half out of the river. Perched on the seat of that rickety vehicle was a young Indian woman who held a smoking rifle in her hands. She was ripe with child and her quilled doeskin dress was pulled tightly across her swollen belly.

"Ain't she a caution?" the trapper shouted in a deep baritone voice that rivaled the volume of his laugh. "I'll be ding-dong damned if she cain't shoot the ear off a fly."

While Kierin and Jacob exchanged astonished looks, Clay squinted across the glare of the sun-flecked water.

"Ben?"
Clay called. "Ben Crowley?"

The old man shaded his eyes with a bear paw-sized hand and let out a whoop. "Well, if that don't beat all. 'Zat you, Sprout?"

Clay's face brightened like a candle-lit birthday cake. "It sure as hell is, you old grizzly eater. What're you doing so far east?"

The old man let out another sharp laugh. "Remindin' myself why I left." Crowley hopped aboard his cart and slapped the traces across the backs of the mules. The Indian woman beside him stowed the rifle beneath their feet.

When Crowley's wagon pulled up alongside theirs, the old trapper reached down and seized Clay's hand in a bone-crushing squeeze and the two men slapped each other hard on the shoulder.

"God, it's good to see you again, Ben," said Clay. "How long has it been?"

Ben ran his fingers thoughtfully through his scraggly beard. "Five winters, near as I can figure." Eyeing Clay speculatively, he added, "You filled out some since then, boy."

Clay smiled broadly and slapped him on the arm again.

"Oh, Ben, I'd like you to meet Jacob, the man whose neck your friend here just saved. Jacob—Ben Crowley."

Jacob, who was still recovering from the shock, extended a hand to the older man. "Pleasure's mine, suh."

"Ben. Just Ben," Crowley corrected, pumping Jacob's hand. "An this here's Wakinyela." He cupped a hand on her shoulder. "That's her Sioux name, but she answers to Dove."

Dove was even younger than she'd looked from a distance, and Kierin doubted she was over twenty. Her features, strong yet utterly feminine, were marred only by the thin slash of a scar that ran across the length of her cheek. Her straight black hair, neatly plaited and tied with leather thongs, rode along the top of her swollen belly. They were an odd pair, the trapper and the girl, Kierin thought.

Ben's gaze fell on her. "An' who's this pretty thing?"

"This is... Kierin, Ben," Clay told him. He couldn't bring himself to tell the old man the lie.

If Ben caught the hesitation in Clay's voice, he didn't mention it, but nodded approvingly. "You always was one with an eye for beauty, boy."

Kierin's cheeks flushed pink and she smiled back at the grizzled old trapper. She prepared herself for his bone-crunching handshake, but when his hand swallowed hers, it was with surprising tenderness.

"Ma'am, it's a downright pleasure," he said.

"Mine too," she agreed. "If you and Dove hadn't happened along when you did..."

"Fair shot, ain't she? Taught her everthin' she knows," Ben bragged. "Well, ain't we a sight, jawin' in the middle o' the river. Let's get over to dry land an' we'll do us some serious palaverin'."

The offending deadwood had worked itself free during the fracas, but not before damaging several spokes on the wheel. Clay mounted Taeva and led the still-nervous team of oxen slowly across the span of water, and Jacob rode with Kierin in the wagon.

By the time they reached the shore, the decision to stop for the day had already been made. Theirs wasn't the only wagon suffering damage from the crossing. The Tolefson wagon had broken a hound, while two other rigs had taken on water and their supplies had to be dried out.

Ben and Dove set up camp beside Clay's wagon and while the light was good, the men worked on repairing the wheel. Dove helped Kierin prepare the evening meal, contributing freshly picked wild onions and Lamb's Tongue to the common stew pot. Kierin was glad for the company, but she wondered about Dove's curious silence. She had yet to hear the girl utter a word, either in her own tongue or in English, though she understood everything that was being said to her. She seemed to communicate through those expressive eyes of hers—bright, inquisitive, and brown as ripe buckeyes.

Kierin ladled helpings of the savory-smelling stew onto the sturdy tin plates, absently wondering if the baby Dove carried belonged to Ben. The spark of affection between the two was unmistakable, just as it was between Ben and Clay.

Clay.

She smiled, remembering the look that had transformed his face when he'd recognized Ben at the river. The change had taken her breath away. Free for that moment from the ghosts of his past, Kierin glimpsed the man Clay
could
be if only he would allow it.

She released a long breath. Providence, she decided, had seen fit to put Ben in their path. For that she was grateful. Who knew what would come of it?

* * *

Ben Crowley was a man who enjoyed his food. His manner of eating was at once artless and fascinating. He used the spoon he'd been given, but Kierin supposed that the lack of one would prove no obstacle to him. With each savored bite, he hummed a little tuneless melody which clearly held a note of appreciation. Already on his third helping of stew, he mopped the last spot of gravy from his plate with the remains of his biscuit and popped it into his mouth, relishing the taste. He patted his belly and waggled his shaggy eyebrows at Kierin.

"A man can forget a lot of things about civilization," he said, "but good food ain't one of 'em. You think you kin teach Dove to make biscuits like these?"

Dove and Kierin exchanged conspiratorial smiles. "I already did," she told him with a laugh. "Not bad for a first attempt, mm-m?"

A look of awe crossed Ben's face and he let out a bark of laughter. "Wal, I'll be cornswaggled. You made these, Dove?" The girl hid her shy smile behind her hand. "By jingo, girl, I knew you had possibilities. I reckon I'll have to lay us in a supply o' wheat flour at Kearny in that case."

Clay set his empty plate down close to the flickering fire of buffalo chips. "Does that mean you'll be traveling with us for a while, Ben?" he asked hopefully.

"Can't find much argument agin' it," Ben answered. "Me an' Dove's headed back to the Absarokas. Got me a trap line up there and a cabin big enough fer two." He glanced at Dove's ripe belly. "Or three."

"You said Dove was Sioux?" asked Kierin.

The old trapper nodded, fishing an intricately carved bone pipe out of a small beaded deer-skin bag tied to his waist. "Dove's folks was Lakota—all killed by the same Pawnee raiders that took her for a slave. Now that she's marked," Ben's explained, indicating the slash on her cheek, "she ain't of a mind to go back to the Sioux. I bought her from a lickered up Pawnee named Coyote Runs back in Council Bluffs four months ago."

Ben poked a thin stem of stiff grass into the blackened bowl of his pipe and scooped out the old, spent ashes. "And if yer tryin' to reckon if it's my babe a-growing in there, I'll save ya the trouble," he told them matter-of-factly. "It ain't. The rest is Dove's business an' none 'a mine. I'm long past my prime mating years anyway," he said with the characteristic bluntness Clay remembered. "She says she wants to go with me and I'm glad fer the company." He rubbed his gnarled fingers across the smooth stem of his pipe and smiled at Dove.

Clay frowned slightly, regarding the old trapper in a new light. It hadn't occurred to him before this moment that Ben might have regrets about the solitary life he'd chosen. Oddly, Clay mused, it was the path he seemed destined to follow as well.

He looked up and found Kierin studying Ben and Dove with an almost wistful expression. The firelight played across her delicate features and her hair took on the brilliant color of the flame. A wave of desire shot through him so strong it made his breath catch.
God, she's a beautiful woman,
he thought, unable to drag his eyes from the sight of her. The image of her struggling to save Jacob from that snake rose in his mind. Her feisty spirit and her sense of loyalty surprised him again, and again. She deserved more than she'd been handed in life—more than he would ever be able to give her.

Ben tamped a good-sized pinch of tobacco into his pipe then lit it with the glowing end of a piece of dead grass. "Sprout, you still remember the old place we had up in the Bitterroot Range?"

The Bitterroots.
The name sent memories rushing back to Clay. It had been home—as much of a home as he'd known for years. Ben had found him in '42—young, green, and stubbornly alone in the foothills of those mountains, trying to eke out a living as a trapper. The old man, who would become more of a father to Clay than his own had ever been, gathered Clay under his wing and taught him his trade. Ben took him into his world, explained the ins and outs of fur trading, and instilled in Clay a deep and abiding respect for the Indians who shared the land with them.

The place they'd called home wasn't much, but even now, if he closed his eyes, he could almost smell the earthy blend of wood smoke and tanned hides which were as much a part of the small cabin they shared as the rough-hewn timbers that supported it.

"How could I forget that little hole we called home?" he asked, pulling himself from the self-indulgent memory. "Those were good times, Ben."

Ben made a sound deep in his throat as if the memory gave him as much pleasure as it did Clay. He took a few long draws on the stem of his pipe and leaned forward. His fringed elbows dangled over his knees. "I was right sorry to hear about your troubles a few years back, Clay."

Clay's back straightened and his gaze flicked up involuntarily to Kierin. She was clearing the dishes with Dove. For a fraction of a second, she looked up to search his face and the tenderness in her eyes sent an unexpected shock rippling through him. He glanced away quickly, afraid to ponder what was behind that tenderness.

It shouldn't have surprised him that word of what had happened on his ranch had gotten around to Ben. Still, it did. "How'd you hear?"

"Old Tom Fitzpatrick. Said he'd run into you at the Fort Laramie powwow a couple years back. Said you was after the bastards that done it." He paused, waiting for Clay to respond.

Silence.

"You ever get 'em, son?" Ben prodded gently.

The familiar mask descended over Clay's face, but this time the look was couched in pain. "Two of 'em," he admitted. "Never did find the other one. He was hiding behind the name of some company that was trying to buy up the land north of Oregon City for the timber. After the fire, near as I could figure, the third man sold out and moved back East. That's where I've been for the better part of three years."

Ben crossed his moccasined feet, pulling them close to his body, and wrapped his arms around his knees Indian-style. "Damn shame," he said with a regretful shake of his head. "You headed back there now? To Oregon?"

"Yeah. The trail is cold behind me now. If I go back to where I began, maybe..." His voice drifted off, his thought left unspoken. The fire hissed in the silence that fell. Across the encampment someone was playing a wistful tune on a mouth harp.

"Maybe it's time to let it go, son," Ben suggested gently.

The flare of anger in Clay's eyes was brief and, out of respect for Ben, disappeared almost as fast as it came.

Let it go,
Clay repeated silently. It was a litany that had crossed his own mind many times in the past few years though the very idea seemed a betrayal. Until now, no one had dared to say it to him, but it was a sentiment he'd read often in Jacob's eyes.

In his heart, he knew they were both right. Killing those two men hadn't brought back Amanda or their child. Instinctively, he'd known from the start that she wouldn't have wanted it. That wasn't her way.

None of that had mattered to him three years ago, so blinded was he by anger and hatred. It had simply become, over the years, a personal vendetta for him—a temporary if fleeting balm for the pain of his loss. Revenge, he'd discovered, wasn't sweet and it hadn't changed anything.

Except him.

"About Tom Fitzpatrick, Ben," Clay began, wanting to change the subject but reluctant to embark on an equally painful one.