LeClerc 01 - Autumn Ecstasy (22 page)

“Zeke?” Blinded from staring into the fire, he looked up and grinned with relief. “You had me worried that you woun’t be a fmdin’ your way back here.”

When his vision cleared, the grin left his face and he found himself staring into the business end of a long rifle. As his hand moved to the knife at his hip the gun pressed firmly against his chest.

“Throw the knife, careful like, past the fire,” Kaleb said in a deadly soft voice.

Using only two fingers, Jeb tossed the knife, handle first, beyond the fire. His gaze rested briefly on his own rifle only an arm’s length away.

“What’d I ever do to you?” Jeb whined. “Why you been a trackin’ us?”

“It’s a long story.” Kaleb rested the rifle on his arm, his finger firmly on the trigger. “One you just might live long ‘nough to hear.”

“I ain’t interested in hearing no stories, old man. Say your peace and get out!”

Kaleb’s eyes narrowed as he looked at the other man. “How old do you think I am?” he asked quietly.

“What the hell do it matter how old you are?”

“Just been a thinkin’ on it, I figure how you might be nearly my age.”

Jeb snorted as he looked at Kaleb’s gray beard, badly wrinkled face and scarred head.

“You ain’t gonna believe me none, but four year back my hair tweren’t gray … it were the color of corn. Yes siree, my woman liked my yeller hair, used to run her fingers through it …” His voice drifted away at the memory of Mary’s fascination with his hair, so different from her silky black locks.

After his third winter as a longhunter, Kaleb Smith knew he had found the kind of life he’d searched for. Unlike some men who quit after the first lonely winter of solitude, Kaleb relished every day of isolation.

Raised on a farm in the Carolinas, the third of fifteen children, Kaleb had never known a moment for quiet thoughts, or had the place to indulge them. Seventeen people in a two room cabin did not allow for privacy and every minute of every day was spent in providing for their existence.

Leaving home at sixteen, Kaleb tried several occupations. After five years of slowly drifting westward he joined up with an old hunter and spent his first winter running trap lines. That spring, with his share from the sale of the furs, he bought supplies and went out on his own.

His first winter alone he ran into a small tribe of Delaware wintering not far from the abandoned cabin he had found and claimed as his own. From the time he saw the woman, barely more than a girl, he knew she was the missing thing that would make his life complete. It took two years and a winter’s worth of furs in gifts to make her his wife.

Kaleb learned a working knowledge of the Delaware language, but her name was almost impossible for him to pronounce. He renamed his sweet, gentle wife. Mary.

Eager to please her golden haired husband, Mary gave to Kaleb a gentleness he had never known. Her smallest smile gave him joy, her tender touch brought exquisite pleasure, her soft voice was a velvet whispered sigh caressing his senses.

Among the first of the many things Kaleb taught her of the white man’s ways was how to kiss. An enthusiastic pupil, it was a lesson she learned quickly and practiced frequently … with his willing cooperation. More than once her lips, soft and tender against his, invited him to delay his plans for the day. He never refused her invitation.

Mary sent him off on each journey with the taste of her bps on his. When he returned, she greeted him in the same way. She never tired of the white man’s way of showing affection. Usually she thought the Indian way of doing things was better, but she decided a kiss was something greatly missing from the Indian life.

She was gentle and eager to please, but she was stubborn too. When she thought she was in the right she would plant her feet firmly, raise her chin determinedly and not back down. Her black eyes would flash and she’d speak her own language so quickly Kaleb would have trouble following. He enjoyed these confrontations as much, if not more, than any other and on more than one occasion he had been guilty of instigating them.

Mary was his woman, his friend, his lover … his heart. And he had two short years with her.

Winter was coming and Kaleb journeyed to the nearest outpost one last time before the deep snow made the trip impossible. The round trip took ten days and was one he made two or three times a year. Mary usually travelled with him, but this year she was late in preparing for winter and decided to stay home. Kaleb felt no undue concern about leaving her alone. It was the way of the wilderness.

He kissed her goodbye and pushed his canoe away from shore. Looking back just before he rounded a bend in the river Kaleb saw her wave — it was over a year before he saw her again.

Kaleb shook his head, almost surprised to find himself in the cave. He seldom allowed his memories to run free rein anymore, but he felt Jeb deserved to know exactly why he was going to die.

“It took me a year to find her,” Kaleb said, the gentleness leaving his eyes as they turned to a chilling sky blue. “And it took her another year to die.

“She died slow, one day at a time. Her smile, her gentleness and her pride was gone by the time I got her away from that Frenchie you sold her to.” He didn’t add that he’d left the man with a lead slug between his eyes.

“She wouldn’t even let me touch her to help her into my canoe.” His hands tightened on the rifle. “Said she was dirt, a whore. She’d been raised to believe it were wrong to be with any man but her husband.

“The year it took her to die she’d talk sometime. It took a while but I pieced it together, the things you and that crazy brother of yours did to her. It nigh on to kilt me when I learnt she’d been carryin’ my babe and when you found it out you beat her until she lost it.

“And you never stopped heatin’ her. She was covered in scars. Your bastard brother even cut off one of her tits to make that pouch he carries his carvings in.

“My gentle, sweet Mary were an old woman when she died. You broke her spirit and there tweren’t nothin’ left for her to bve for.”

Jeb remembered the young Indian woman they had taken that first year after Zeke had killed the white girl they had planned to sell.

“She tweren’t nothin’ but an Injun whore!” he screamed.

“She was my wife!”
Kaleb snarled. “If’n I’da found you right away affer my Mary died I’da killed you slow, make it last for days, but now I just want it done.

“You’re gonna die. For what you did to my Mary and the other women you took. You’da done it again to that little gal I took to the Bear if’en I hadn’t been there to stop it.”

“Old man you can’t do this to me!”

“Who’s gonna stop me?” he asked softly. “You know, you never did tell me how old you think I am. Mayhap I’m a little older you.

“Come summer, if’en I live that long, I’ll be thirty-four.”

Kaleb’s rifle no longer pointed at Jeb’s head. The heavy weight of it had pulled it down, but Kaleb’s finger was firm on the trigger. Jeb saw his chance and reached frantically for his own rifle. It was the move Kaleb had waited for. He let Jeb reach the weapon, pull it into his grasp and turn to aim.

Kaleb’s finger tightened on the trigger.

Kaleb walked away from the cave, the falling snow whispering softly past his face. For the first time in years Mary’s memory played gently through his mind. He again saw her shy smile and felt her velvet voice. His Indian wife thanked him for his revenge.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

As Linsey slid quietly off the foot of the bed, Bear opened his eyes and stretched. He folded his hands behind his head and stared at the ceiling. Contentment wove around him with the delicacy of a golden web, spun magically from whispered words and tender caresses.

The blizzard that began the night they’d first made love had lasted for three days, followed almost immediately by another one and yet another several days later. Winter at its worst became a time of discovery for the snowbound lovers. They learned each other as only two people alone can, speaking of their pasts, their likes and dislikes, family and friends.

And they loved.

Bear muffled a groan of pleasure at the memory. After her initial shyness was overcome, Linsey had become a passionate and adventurous lover.

Turning his head, he watched her as she crossed the room. She wore one of his flannel shirts, the hem coming down to her knees and the sleeves rolled back several times to free her hands. His eyes narrowed as he thought of the beauty that shirt covered. Her body was perfect, and he never tired of touching, tasting, or caressing it. He could feel the hardness of her nipple in his mouth and her silky legs wrapped around him. His desire grew as she bent toward the fire, and his groan was almost audible at her unknowing display. He briefly considered telling her to forget breakfast and come back to bed.

Linsey moved gracefully around the room, confidently preparing their breakfast, unaware of his burning gaze. Sweeping away the cold ashes, she found the glowing embers she knew would be underneath and slowly added kindling. Building a fire seemed natural now, and she bore scarce resemblance to the helpless girl be had found in his cabin.

When the fire was burning brightly, she gathered the ingredients for the biscuits Bear had recently taught her to make. She set the Dutch oven in the glowing coals for it to warm while she carefully measured, mixed, rolled and cut.

Bear watched through lowered lids and fought to dampen his rising passion. He grinned at the bottom lip caught firmly between her teeth as she concentrated on her chore. Her hair hung down her back, a scarlet flame seeming to float around her. She left it loose at night because he loved to tangle his hands in it, and most mornings he willingly helped comb it free of snarls. Usually the first thing she did upon leaving their bed was to coil her hair into a rope and knot it through itself so that there would be no danger of it dangling in the fire. It was a measure of her concentration on her new task that she had not done so today.

Hating to give away the fact that he was awake, Bear opened his mouth to remind her just as her flourcovered hands went to her hair. She quickly knotted it, unaware of the coating of white she left behind.

Linsey moved the Dutch oven from the fire, put her biscuits inside and replaced the lid. She returned it to its place and carefully shoveled hot coals onto it.

A satisfied smile crossed her lips as she made coffee and began frying thin slices of venison. Her stomach growled noisily as the odors filled the cabin, and she looked toward the bed to see if they had awakened Bear.

“How can he still be asleep?” she muttered to herself, nibbling on a crisp piece of meat.

Determined to wake him, Linsey began banging pans and rattling dishes. When the meat was done, she moved it to a plate and made gravy from the drippings. Removing the lid from the Dutch oven, she blew away the ashes that had fallen in and found that the biscuits were golden brown, only slightly darker on the bottom.

The meat was crisp, the biscuits perfect, the gravy thick and the coffee dark brown. She was starving!
He
was still asleep!

Bear knew when she began making noises that he was supposed to wake, but he enjoyed watching her too much to cooperate. He knew that he would never tire of seeing her move unconsciously around the cabin, doing the chores a wife does for her husband.

He closed his eyes at the thought. Wife! How he longed to make her his wife, to spend the rest of his life with her. She was adapting amazingly well to the wilderness, no longer jumping at every strange noise or getting upset when it was necessary for him to leave her alone all day while he checked his traps.

But how could he ask her to stay with him in the wilderness when all he could offer was a floorless, oneroom cabin, an uncertain future and constant danger? In a land of few white women, word of her vibrant beauty would quickly pass along. Men would travel for miles just to see her, and not all of them would come with honorable intentions. He could protect her when he was here, but how about the many times he would be away?

During their long talks, Bear had not been surprised to learn that her father had been wealthy, and he knew there was a mansion and a place in society waiting for her in Philadelphia.

He could offer love and the promise to cherish her for a lifetime, but would that be enough? If she stayed, would she someday remember all that she had given up and long for it?

He couldn’t ask her to stay, but God, how was he going to let her go?

Abruptly, Bear swung his legs over the side of the bed and sat up. He rested his elbows on his thighs and stared at the floor … the dirt floor.

“‘Bout time you woke up, sleepy head,” Linsey called softly. “I’m starving, and if you don’t get over here, I’m going to eat without you.”

Bear raised his head and stared at her, his eyes narrowed, his face expressionless. How could she be so cheerful when his heart was being torn from his body?

“Ah oh, somebody woke up on the wrong side of the bed,” she teased. “Come eat, grouch, and see if it doesn’t make you feel better.”

He stood, and the fur slid from his body. Her look turned sensuously hungry as she stared at his hardened shaft. “Looks like you want something other than food.” She raised glowing eyes to his. “Maybe something special for dessert?”