Come Spring (51 page)

Patsy stared at Buck as if she had not heard a word Annika had said. She raised her head and in a clear, loud voice said to him, “O, never was there queen so mightily betrayed! Yet at the first I saw the treasons planted.”

Buck’s voice was filled with sadness. “I had to do it, Patsy. I had to see that you were safe for your own good and the baby’s.”

“Thou art turned the greatest lair,” Patsy said bitterly.

Annika watched the strange exchange, saw the faraway look in Patsy Scott’s eyes, and hugged Buttons closer. The child was arrested by the sight of the woman who looked so like her uncle and spoke in a way that commanded such attention.

Buck glanced up the stairs to the second story where Rose and Joseph slept, then toward the kitchen where he heard Kase talking to Wilson and Mrs. MacGuire. “Let’s get out of this hallway and into the parlor.”

Annika led the way. Buck waited until he was certain Patsy had followed her. He closed the door behind them. Determined to try to call her attention to Buttons, Annika said, “Patsy, this is Buttons. She’s your little girl.”

Patsy raised her brow, looked down upon Buttons with disdain, and then coolly said, “The child cannot be mine. Behold! The child born of Egypt was laid in a reed basket and cast upon the waters of the Nile. It is said she dwells now amid the great pyramids.”

Buck folded his arms across his chest, determined to show Annika the futility of her efforts. “This is the baby you tried to throw off the roof, Patsy, and if I hadn’t stopped you, she’d be dead now.”

Stunned by the revelation, Annika stared at Patsy, unable to believe the stiffly composed woman had ever been insane enough to try to kill her own child.

Patsy stared at Buttons and her eyes widened. “All strange and terrible events are welcome, but comforts we despise. Our size of sorrow, proportioned to our cause, must be as great as that which makes it.”

“What does that mean?” Annika whispered to Buck.

“She’s quoting Cleopatra again.”

“I was told to sacrifice the child, for as He called to Abraham, and bid him sacrifice Isaac, I being Egypt could do no less.” Patsy’s gaze began to shift rapidly back and forth between Annika and Buttons.

Buck turned to Annika. The sadness in his eyes was almost her undoing. “She mixes up stories in the Bible with
Antony and Cleopatra.
Those were the only two books we owned besides the medical almanac.”

As if the visit were ended, Patsy abruptly turned toward the door. “Our lamp is spent, it’s out!”

Buck turned to Annika, his expression grim. He looked down at his hands, then at her. “I guess you see now why I never told you everything about Patsy or the rest of my glorious family.”

“Oh, Buck. It doesn’t matter.”

“It does to me,” he said.

Annika guessed Patsy’s sudden arrival had been her brother’s doing, one more of his attempts to keep Buck at the ranch. She wished none of it had happened as she saw the deep sorrow on Buck’s face.

Patsy stood in front of the parlor door, unwilling to open it herself. “Your honor calls you hence,” she said to Buck.

He turned away from Annika and crossed the room to open the door for his sister. “Come on, Patsy. We’ll find Mary and you can go home now.”

As if he were no more than a servant, Patsy walked past him without acknowledgment.

Annika’s knees were shaking when she sank to the settee and laid her cheek against the top of Buttons’s head. She tried to blot out the recurring image of Patsy standing on the roof of Buck’s cabin threatening to throw the infant off. “I love you, Buttons,” Annika whispered as she picked up one of Buttons’s books, an alphabet primer.

Buttons smiled up at her. “Me love Ankah.”

They read for a few moments, Annika straining to hear the noise from the front hall that would signal the departure of Wilson and the others. She was just about to take Buttons up to visit Rose and Joseph when the rustle of material in the doorway gave her pause. Her heart jumped to her throat when she glanced up expecting to see Buck and found Patsy standing there alone instead.

As casually as possible, Annika stood up holding Buttons and slowly put the settee between herself and Buttons and the other woman.

“Hast thou affection for him?”

Patsy’s blunt question startled her, but Annika managed to nod.

“And the child?”

“Yes. I hope you don’t mind, Patsy.” She wondered whether Patsy answered to her own name or to “Cleopatra.”

Patsy glanced back toward the door. Seemingly alive with an energy of its own, her waving blond hair swayed around her shoulders as she moved. She took a step forward until she was close enough to reach out and touch Annika. Only the settee separated them. Patsy looked left and right, her eyes wide like a creature who was being stalked by hounds. What ghosts haunted her mind? And why?

“Give me the child,” Patsy said.

Buttons understood the tone of the command and hid her face against Annika’s neck. Annika tried to protest. “I don’t think—”
Where was Buck. How could Patsy have gotten away from him?
Annika stepped back again.

“Give her to me!”
Patsy’s voice lowered menacingly as she took a step forward. Her fingers curved as she extended her hands toward Buttons.

Footsteps pounded against the floor in the room overhead. Frantic now, Annika glanced at the wall behind her. There was no escaping through the parlor door but there was a window behind her. She prayed it wasn’t locked. If she could just get close enough to open it and set Buttons outside, the child could then ran around the veranda to the kitchen and alert the others.

Just as Annika backed into the corner and began to turn toward the window, Patsy dropped her hands to her sides and began to speak again. Oddly enough, her eyes held the clarity of sanity as she shook her head and softly said, “You would never understand. You don’t know what I saw. I could not live with it forever, and so it is far easier for me to be Egypt than who I was.”

As Annika tried to understand, she watched the blue eyes so identical to Buck’s glaze over again as Patsy appeared to be looking past Annika into a world of her own.

Buck rushed in the door. He pushed past Patsy and took Annika’s hand as he glanced between her and Buttons. “Are you all right?”

“Yes. We’re fine.”

“One minute she was right beside me and the next she was gone. I heard a noise upstairs and ran to see if she had found Rose and the baby. I should have watched her more closely. If she had hurt you...”

Annika heard Wilson and Kase in the hallway. Relieved that Patsy would soon be gone and Buttons would be safe, Annika told him, “Go and tell her good-bye, Buck. We’ll go upstairs with Rose.”

I
T
was the longest climb of his life. Buck mounted the stairs slowly, still favoring his injured leg. He found Annika and Buttons in Rose Storm’s room, Annika seated on a rocking chair drawn up beside the bed as she talked softly with her sister-in-law. He paused for a moment to stand unnoticed in the open doorway so that he could watch her for what would be the last time. She smiled as she reached down to pat the new baby on its well-padded, blanketed behind.

“Are you feeling all right, Rose?”

“Sí.
Thanks to your friend Buck, I am good. So is Joseph. I still think about what might happen to me if he did not come here. I am grateful to him and to you.”

Buck saw Annika hesitate, hated the sadness that crept across her face and darkened her radiant smile. “Yes, I’m glad he was here to help, too.”

Before she could say anything else, Buck cleared his throat and both women looked in his direction. “I came to see how you’re doing, Mrs. Storm, but it looks like you’re doing fine.”

Rose smiled up at him. Her color was good, her eyes clear. She even looked rested. Rose had twisted her long hair into a single braid that hung over one shoulder as she lay propped up against a barrage of pillows. The simple hairstyle reminded him of the way Annika had plaited hers at Blue Creek before she went to bed at night. It was a far cry from the upswept hairdo she had assumed now that she had returned to civilization.

“You just tell your own doctor about those stitches, ma’am, and he’ll see to them and take them out when the time comes.”

Rose colored bright red at the mention of such a delicate matter, but nodded all the same.
“Sí,
I will do this, Mr. Scott.”

He forced himself to cross the highly polished floor, to tread the thick Persian carpet in the center of the room with his weathered moccasins to stand close to Annika. He looked at Joseph and smiled. The little boy was one thing he could be proud of.

“Will you hold him?” Rose asked.

He heard a soft, choking sound from Annika, but dared not look at her again. He shook his head and thrust his hands in his pockets. “No, that’s fine. I wouldn’t want to upset the little fellow. Is he eating all right?”

“Like his papa,” Rose said with a laugh. “Hungry all the time.”

“From the looks of him, he’ll be a tall one.” Buck felt out of his element standing in the cozy atmosphere of the bedroom while he made small talk with another man’s wife. He found himself wanting to turn and walk out the door and out of the house without a word to Annika Storm, but he knew he couldn’t give in to his cowardice and simply disappear. He turned to her, found her staring up at him with round blue eyes filled with hope and love that he knew he didn’t deserve.Not now. Especially not now, when he knew full well he was going to leave her.

“Will you walk me out to the barn?” he asked Annika.

The rocker stopped but she continued to stare up at him as if she were memorizing every bit of him, his unruly hair and every black-and-blue corner of his face. She didn’t answer him, merely nodded, then stood up and began to walk out of the room. Annika paused in the doorway and spoke softly to Buttons. “Stay here with Rose, will you, Buttons, and be very quiet, because Joseph is asleep.”

“Me go, too, Buck?” Buttons looked up from where she was piling wooden spools into a lopsided triangle.

He turned to Annika for help, but she quickly looked away. “No, you stay here. Annika will be right back,” he promised the child.

When he turned back to face her, Annika had already disappeared down the hall. He heard her muffled footsteps on the stairs.

S
HE
had promised herself she would not cry.

But promises are made to be broken, she decided, as tear tracks stained her cheeks. The wind blew across the open land, and because she had forgotten her coat, Annika wrapped her arms about her and rubbed her hands up and down to warm herself. She walked ahead of Buck like a condemned man as they approached the barn. Late afternoon shadows filled the interior of the huge, open building that smelled of hay, horses, and dust. The men were still working; one could be seen across the stable yard repairing the broken corral gate. The barn was deserted when Annika walked inside and moved far enough away from the entrance so that they would be hidden by shadows.

She refused to say anything more to try to change his mind. She had already all but begged, and begging was something she was not about to do. Strength came to her as she thought of her mother, knowing Analisa would do the same under the circumstances. Recalling her mother’s stand against the ridicule of her neighbors would keep her own spine stiff and her hands from reaching out to Buck. He would remember her for her strength and stubbornness if nothing else—she was determined of that as she stood waiting in the deepening shadows.

He walked over to the stall where his big-rumped bay was stabled. She waited while he slipped on the bridle and then saddled the horse. It gave her time to wipe her tears and straighten the wisps of hair that had escaped the upswept style. Her fingers touched a dangling hairpin and she shoved it back into place. Glancing down, she noticed her bright yellow button shoes were muddy.

“Annika?” He was standing before her, turning his big hat over and over in his tanned hands.

“Well,” she said, drawing in a deep breath, standing straight and tall, “I suppose this is good-bye.”

He looked taken aback for a moment, as if he had actually expected her to weep and wail and cling to him. Then he said, “I guess it is.”

She held out her hand. “Then I wish you well, Buck Scott. It has been quite an adventure for me. I hope it wasn’t all bad for you.”

“Annika, I—”

“And there’s no need to worry about Buttons.” Before he could say or do anything to shake her false courage, she interrupted him. “Rose and Kase have asked to have her, and I’m sure you can see she will have the best home any little girl could want.”
As if I could give her up now.
She heard herself speaking in a clear, steady voice and wondered how it could be so when she felt as if she were breaking into millions of tiny cells that would soon dry up and blow away on the Wyoming wind.

It gave her satisfaction to see him fidget with the reins he held loosely between his fingers. She was thankful for the weak light—it helped to hide the tears that still threatened.

“I’m so sorry, Annika. I wish it could be another way.”

“No you don’t,” she said. “If you did, you would believe me when I say I’m willing to try to live wherever you want, instead of telling me you know what’s right for me.”

He put on his hat. It covered his shining curls and cloaked his face in shadow. He took down his heavy jacket from where he had thrown it over his saddle and shrugged into it.

She raised her hand to touch the curls that fell over the back of his collar but drew it back before he noticed.

He wanted to kiss her good-bye. She knew it by the tension in his stance, his hesitation about leaving.

She wanted his kiss more than life itself at the moment, but she knew it would hurt forever if she let him touch her. This way she stood a chance of forgetting.

Annika stepped back, a silent signal for him to go.

Buck hesitated for a moment more, then walked his horse out of the barn.

She watched him mount up, stood ramrod straight with her arms clutched about her as he rode out of the yard without a backward glance. She could still see the top of his hat and his broad shoulders silhouetted against the sunset as he made his way past the bunkhouse and then the buffalo corral. It was a portrait of times past and present, the buffalo hunter outlined against the setting sun with the last few milling buffalo appearing as dark, nearly undefinable shadows in the foregound.