Deborah Camp (9 page)

She wrested her wrists from the rope pulls. “Let me have my baby. Put her in my arms.”

He did, then lifted Copper’s trembling legs from the rag stirrups. “Which of you gets a bath first, you or the baby?”

“The baby. That poultice I made …” She looked toward the rags. “Somewhere over there. You’ll need to press it against where I’m torn. Will you do that?”

“I’ll do whatever you ask,” he said, meaning it. What she’d been through left him in awe. He could never do enough for her.

He bathed the baby carefully and joyfully, running a soft washrag over the tiny, squirming body. The new life made gurgling noises. Her skin changed from a flushed red to a mottled pink.

“Be careful of her head,” Copper murmured. “It’s soft, remember.”

“I remember.” He glanced at Copper and saw that she was shivering. “I’ll be right there, Copper.”

“I’m… f–fine.”

“You’re freezing.”

“I’m f–fine,” she repeated.

The first thing he noticed about the baby was that it was half Indian. Thick, black hair covered her tiny head. Freshly washed, her hair lay in ringlets against her dark scalp. She made
waaaa-waaaa
sounds that didn’t even sound human, but more like a kitten or a newborn goat. Tucker chuckled, caught one flailing fist, and delighted in the baby’s testiness.

“She’s got your Irish temper, I do believe.”

“Irish? Me?” She sighed. “Never thought of myself that way. I’m Absaroka.” She looked at him and her infant. “Hurry. I want to hold her.”

“She’s all clean.” He wrapped the baby in the bunting Copper had told him to use. “Here you go.” He found he hated to release the baby, but he knew she was Copper’s, not his. He placed the infant into her shivering arms. “What will you call her? Got a name picked out?”

“Valor.”

“Valor?”

Copper nodded. “I believe we live up to our names. This child will have untarnished courage. Valor.”

“Well, if she takes after you, I don’t doubt that for a minute.”

Copper studied her infant’s face, her hands, her tiny feet. Tucker cleansed Copper’s bruised and torn body. He helped her slip into a cotton nightdress. He changed the bedclothes, then tucked her and the baby in the fresh linens. She encouraged the baby to suckle, although her milk hadn’t dropped yet. Tucker applied the poultice to her birth wounds and surprised himself with his stoic behavior. He’d blushed each time he’d thought of performing such intimate tasks, but now that he was actually doing them, he felt no embarrassment.

When he’d helped her into the nightdress, he’d noticed that her stomach was no longer as tight as a drum. The muscles quivered beneath her skin. He’d also noticed that some of her stretch marks were pink and new—others were older and faded. He kept his questions to himself for the time being, but he wondered what had happened to her other child. Had the Indians kept it?

“How do you feel?”

“Tired.” Her eyelids drooped.

“Go to sleep. Want me to take the baby?”

“No!” She angled to one side, shielding the child from him.

Tucker patted the air. “Okay, okay. I just thought you might want to put her in the cradle.” It stung that she wouldn’t let him cuddle the baby. It also baffled him that he wanted to.

“Not yet.” She spread a hand over the baby’s head in a protective gesture. “She’s pretty, isn’t she?”

“Prettiest baby I’ve ever helped deliver.”

Copper laughed weakly. “Valor and I will sleep now. You, too. I imagine you’re give out.”

“Not really. I’m tired, but I don’t think I can sleep.”

“Then will you warm some water and wet a few rags?”

“Sure,” he said, already moving toward the fire. “What for?”

“I’ll press them against my breasts to help bring some of my milk down and ease the tenderness in them. They ache.”

“You mean the baby can’t get any milk?”

“A little, maybe. I’ll have to help it along.”

“The baby won’t starve, will she?”

She smiled. “No. Valor has been well fed in my womb. She’ll be fine until my milk runs.”

He gave her the warm, damp rags, and she placed them on her breasts under the nightgown. The baby stopped suckling and fell asleep. Peace bathed Valor’s perfect, oval face. Her rosebud mouth glistened.

“Oh, Copper, she is a pretty, little thing. This whole …” He flung out a hand, at a loss for words. “Well, it’s truly amazing. How you survived it, I don’t know. I’d be passed out and on my way to dying, sure as the world.”

“No, you wouldn’t. Know why?” She waited for him to shake his head. “Because you’d have this little one to take care of. No time for dying. This baby makes me want to heal up fast and live to see her through her growing.”

“Are you hurting bad? Is there anything else I can do?”

“I just want to sleep. You’ve done everything you need to do.” She covered his hand with her own and squeezed. “Thank you, Tucker Jones. Thank you from me and my baby.”

Emotion blocked his throat. He eased away from her to sit by the fire and watch her and the newborn sleep, both utterly exhausted from the miracle they’d wrought. Later, he washed the soiled bedclothes and discarded the used rags. Later still, he sat beside Copper’s bunk and brushed the tangles from her hair. He knew she roused from her weary slumber, but she didn’t open her eyes. He plaited her hair into a thick
braid. When he was done, she rubbed her cheek against the pillow, cradled the baby against her ribs, and slept again.

Tucker was loathe to leave her side. Finally, he rested his head on the mattress near her shoulder and fell into a gray sleep. He was too tired to dream.

D
uring the first three weeks after the baby’s birth, Tucker tried to please Copper, but found little pleasure himself. Irritation set in, ruining what should have been a time of blissful relief.

While he was glad to be helping Copper and repaying her for her kindness, he suffered through Copper’s mood swings. Sometimes she was so sad, she cried, but wouldn’t tell him why. Other times, she radiated happiness, but seemed reluctant to share these moments with him. She guarded her baby jealously. She had grown so closely attached to her child that Tucker felt like an outsider, nothing more than a step-and-fetch-it servant. Wanting to share in the infant’s first weeks, he offered to change her nappies or rock her to sleep, but Copper never let him so much as touch Valor, as if he might mar Valor’s beautiful, olive-colored skin.

After ten days of bed rest, Copper took to her feet again. By the third week she was almost at full steam. She accepted Tucker’s offer to share the chores and give her more time to be with Valor. Sometimes, when Tucker watched Copper feed her child, the natural beauty of the give and take brought a lump to his throat and he ached to cuddle the baby and breathe in that special, fresh scent of a new life. And sometimes he felt something
else … something that shamed him a little—envy.

He felt that gnawing yearning on a sunshiny morning near the end of Valor’s third week in the world. Sitting on the edge of the bunk, Copper rocked Valor back and forth in the stationary chair. The baby stared up at her, dark blue eyes wide, mouth a perfect oval. Tucker stepped closer and bent over her. Copper adjusted her shirt to cover her breast. Tucker told himself not to take it personally, but the swift gesture of modesty stung.

“Want me to hold her a while?” Tucker whispered. “I’ll play with her and you can—”

“No.” Copper flipped the corner of the blanket over the baby’s face, blocking Tucker’s view. “You don’t have to bother yourself with her. She’s mine and I’ll tend to her.” She shifted sideways, adopting a more protective posture.

Tucker bridled his anger. “I know she’s yours, Copper,” he said between clenched teeth. “And I wouldn’t be offering to hold her if I didn’t want to. I’m not going to hurt her, for God’s sake. I’ve got enough sense to know how to hold a baby.”

“If you want to hold something, hold your temper,” she shot back, dark eyes sparking.

Tucker started to pluck the baby from her arms just to show her he could, but he knew that would only drive the wedge more deeply between them. Frustration boiled in him. He didn’t know whether to demand or cajole. Her behavior completely baffled him.

“Oh, to hell with you.” Tucker hooked a hand through the air and grabbed his firewood cane and a shotgun on his way out of the cabin. He stomped through the snow. His eyes burned, stung by the brightness of the sun reflecting on the white landscape and icy crystals floating in the air. His breath escaped in foggy puffs as he made his way behind the cabin to a thicket of bushes. Standing with his back to the cabin, he relieved
himself and tamped down his temper. Tipping back his head, he admired the jagged white-tipped mountains and the bluest sky he’d ever seen. The air he gathered into his lungs was thin and sharp. Somewhere people were getting ready for the Christmas holiday, but not here. Holidays were frivolous in this no-nonsense country.

Life could be good here, though, he mused. Hard, but honest and solitary. A man could merge with the wilderness in these saw-toothed mountains, be known by a different name, and nobody would think to question his history or his reasons for wandering. The war between the States seemed a distant, distorted memory. Only months ago it had been a nightmare of gigantic proportions, consuming his whole existence. There had been a time when he had valued his medals and his reputation as a brave officer.

But the war had gutted him, taken his heart and mind, leaving only a shell occupied by a black, withered soul. Then something had happened inside him. Since the morning of the baby’s birth, he had healed. The will to live tingled through him again. Joyful moments slipped up on him, taking him by surprise. He found himself thinking back on the happy parts of his life and taking stock of where he’d been and where he wanted to go.

He tested his leg, gradually giving it his weight. A sharp pang signaled that he wasn’t quite healed, but almost. That gladdened him. It would feel damn good to stand on both feet, stretch his legs, and feel like a whole man in charge of his own destiny again. Copper’s preoccupation with her baby and subsequent dismissal of him rankled and made him itch to be on his own and show her that he didn’t need her attention—yet, he found himself wanting it and even feeling the nip of jealousy when she devoted herself to Valor and forgot he was anywhere in a mile radius. He’d even found
it too disturbing to watch her nurse the baby! He knew it was stupid, but he felt bereft.

Copper was so snappish! Everything he said to her made her bark at him. Her eyes flashed anger, she frowned and scowled, her whole demeanor told him that he was a damned nuisance now that he had outstayed his usefulness. The woman had become a bristling mass of moods, as prickly as a porcupine.

To make matters worse, his dreams over the past week had been sexual. He had remembered old flames, how their skin felt, how their hair smelled, how hot his blood ran at the height of climax. He hadn’t indulged in such dreams since before his last orders which assigned him to transport deserters to prison and, consequently, had led him to his current convalescence. His sexy dreams confirmed what he already knew—he was almost back to peak condition. Now if he could only find a willing woman with a kindly disposition …

Sentry’s sudden bellow, followed by Patrol’s excited yapping, spun Tucker around. He brought up the shotgun in a reflex action and sighted a cotton-haired hulk astride a sway-backed mule. The old man sang happily as he rode into the clearing.

“Tiddly-dee, Tiddly-dye, a mountain man am I! Tiddly-dee, Tiddly-doe, tis the onliest life I know,” he sang in a melodious voice, and the dogs’ barking changed to passive whines for his attention. “Hello, mongrels. Here you go, you beggars.” He tossed cubes of fat to the dogs, and laughed when they swallowed them whole. “One more for each and that’s all. Chew them, why don’t you.” He flung out the cubes and scrutinized Tucker’s defensive stance. “So, the dead man is walking around and looking to shoot somebody.”

“Who are you?” Tucker called to him.

“Grizzly Gus is what I answer to, soldier boy.
What name do you claim?” His shining eyes took in Tucker from head to foot.

“Gus?” Tucker lowered the shotgun. So this was Grizzly Gus, Copper’s best friend and the man Tucker had fancied might be Copper’s lover. He laughed at the misguided idea, eyeing the man’s long, white hair and bearded face. He looked like Father Christmas! Tucker shifted the shotgun to the crook of his arm.

The visitor’s shoulders and chest looked wide, but it was hard to determine his true dimensions since he was swaddled in layers of animal skins, adding to his overall bulk. A raccoon hat topped his head and the coon’s snout shaded the old man’s forehead. Marbles replaced its eyes. Several necklaces of grizzly claws and teeth clattered around Gus’ wide neck. Colorful bands girdled his legs just below the knees to keep varmints from crawling too far up under his pants. Thick buckskin leggings and knee-high moccasins guarded him from snake bites and brambly bushes. Tucker liked the bigness of the man; not just his physique, but his personality and his voice.

Limping forward, he extended his free hand. “Tucker Jones. Glad to meet you. Copper talks about you all the time.”

“She leads a lonely life and has little to talk about,” he responded with a cagey wink. “You’ve mended quickly, Yank. You can thank Copper’s powerful medicine for that. The girl has the gift, ’tis true.”

“I owe her my life,” Tucker said, then stepped back as Gus swung a leg over the saddle horn and slipped to the ground with surprising agility. “She’ll be glad to see you.”

“And I’m glad to see that you won’t be occupying that grave Copper erected for you any time soon.”

“Grave?”

Gus pointed to the crude cross not far from the cabin. “That’s supposed to be your last resting place, Yankee.”

Tucker smiled and nodded. “Ah, yes. Why’d she go to that trouble?”

“So the Gros Ventre would quit troubling her, flatlander. She’s got a taste for living.” He squinted one eye at him. “You don’t know much about red men, I take it.”