Enchanted Heart (16 page)

Hearing her say that her sister would never love again caused him to wonder if the same was true for Marty and he stopped his horse short, causing the animal to squeal its displeasure at the pain that the bit had inflicted upon its mouth. Caid wheeled the horse around to face her before he asked in earnest, “Will you?”

Marty slowed her horse to stand next to his so that she could hear the question that he had posed. Then, trying not to blush or to look away from his intense stare, Marty shook the strands of hair from her shoulder and tilted her chin, then rolled her eyes to the sky and thought for moments too long for him to endure. She took up the reins and said as quickly as she could without stammering, “I have!”

She spurred her horse away from him, realizing that he understood that she indicated that he was the object of her affection. With a shriek of excitement, she rode through the grove of oaks until it opened into a large, magnificent meadow that was intersected by a meandering river and then dominated by a huge mountainous rock.

Caid kicked his mount forward upon hearing her words of affirmation that she had, indeed, let herself love him and he raced into the woods intent upon catching her to make her repeat them so that he could be sure that she had really uttered them. His heart kept time with the pounding of the stallion’s hooves while he dug his heels into its sides, urging it onward toward his love, his life.

As she crossed the meadow that was covered with an ocean of blue flowers that were swaying in the breeze alongside the long green grass and orange tufts of petals, she was in awe of the beautiful scene. Pulling back on the reins, she sucked in a breath of admiration of the sight before her. Her eyes followed the green and blue and orange of the meadow, over the babbling stream to the giant gleaming rock that towered above her and her mouth gaped in a whispered, “Oh!”

When Caid rode up next to her, he watched the shining radiance of wonder in her light blue eyes and on her peaches-and-cream face. It was all he could do to stay planted in that saddle and to keep from scooping her off of hers and onto the ground to fill her heart and soul with a different sort of enlightenment. Pausing for an instant while he took in her breathtaking beauty in the midst of the colors of the prairie that should have been wiped away by the winds of winter, he fought the urge to ease her down into those blissful colors and find a new bliss.

Instead, he began explaining to her the names of the flowers that licked at their horses’ knees, “Those bluebonnets are special to the Comanche Indians.”

Marty looked puzzled at him so she continued, “Long ago, there was a terrible drought and many of their people died. They prayed to the Great Spirits for rain but still none came. The chief told them to build a fire and that they all had to sacrifice something precious to them by throwing it into the flames. They all threw an object that they felt was important to them, but they still had something else to replace it. There was one little girl, whose family had died of hunger and who had nothing to sacrifice but the doll that her mother had made for her. But she took the doll that she had dressed in a bright blue dress and she threw it into the fire!”

Caid’s hands shot up to the Heavens to emphasize his words. Then they spread out, his fingers dancing in the air as he continued, “At that moment, the rain came, filling the streams and rivers.”

His hands waved over the blue ocean that surrounded them and he said with a marvelous undertone of whispered revelation, “And the next day, the fields were covered with bluebonnets as far as the eye could see. The Indians called it a sign from the spirits that they would never be hungry again.”

Marty remembered all too well the pangs of hunger and the pain of losing her father. But Papa had sacrificed his own life so that his family could have a better one in the new land. She did not reveal this to Caid. Instead, she proclaimed, “What a beautiful story!” Then she asked with fascination, “How do you know such a tale?”

Caid shifted in his saddle before he admitted, “I heard about it a few years ago while I was passing through here.” He ran his fingers through the black wavy curls of his hair before he pointed to the orange blossoms and told her, “Those are what the Indians call Prairie Fire, but we call them Indian Paintbrushes.”

“Why?” Marty asked with a perplexed expression.

“Because of the color, I suppose, is why the Indians call it Prairie Fire,” Caid said with a shrug. Then he continued, “Some Indians used them for painting, that’s where we get the name. You can actually eat the flower.”

“You can?” Marty asked, leaning from her saddle to picked one and then she began to nibble on it. It was sweet and crunchy and quite delectable.

“Yep, the Indians eat it like we would use sugar but only in moderation,” Caid explained. “And only the flowers are edible. The roots and green parts can possibly kill you.”

Hearing this, she immediately stopped short of eating the leaves and stem and tossed the half-eaten flower into the grass. Its sweetness was not worth getting sick over. She wiped her hands on her skirt and watched him stare at that giant gleaming rock while she listened to Caid tell her the history of it.

“They call it Enchanted Rock. The Tonkawa Indians believed that ghost fires lived up there. At night, it howls and groans like tortured souls,” he said with great enthusiasm, drawing out the words to emphasize their significance.

“There is a story that the Spanish tell about a Conquistador who was captured by the Tonkawa Indians, but he escaped into these rock formations. While he was lost in the rocks, he said that he communed with the spirits that lived there and when he came back out, it was as if he was transformed, and he desired only to be with those who communed with this great rock,” Caid said. Then he continued, “The Indians tell the same story as ‘the pale man who was swallowed up by the rock and was reborn as one of their own’. They say that he had enchanted the rock with his spiritual conviction but he insisted that the rock had, instead, enchanted him.”

“I can see why he would believe that,” Marty agreed as she stared at the mesmerizing image before her.

The huge pink rock that rose from the ground was at least four hundred feet tall and, as she followed its base with her eyes, she could see that it encompassed more than five hundred acres. Its glistening granite face beckoned her to come forth and lay her hand upon its fiery flesh, to press her body against its hard, inviting warmth. It called to her, promising everlasting relief of all of her suffering, her pain, her sorrow and, yes, her guilt for wanting to give herself to the man who had captured her heart. Her inhibitions seemed to melt into the steaming waves that danced upon the rose-colored rock that accepted them as her sacrifice to its inconceivable immensity, its awe-inspiring beauty.

And that is where she left them. All of her uneasiness, her fear of intimacy, her lack of confidence in Love’s enduring promises—all of this, she offered to the Enchanted Rock, granting its compelling request.

They rode further toward the rock that seemed to grow with every step of the horses’ hooves until, at last, they stood at its feet and leaned back to raise their faces toward its towering summit as if to worship it as many who had come before them had done.

Chapter Seventeen

Caid dismounted and then assisted Marty to do the same, catching her as she slipped from the saddle to the ground and holding her for moments too long as he caught her eye and was held there as if a spell had been cast upon him. His heart accelerated its beating and he wondered if she could feel it beneath her fingertips when she used his chest for balance. A wink and a smile by him were rewarded with a demure smile from Marty, who raised her eyes to his and somehow saw into his soul.

She, too, had been caught up in that same enchantment and she stared into his deep blue eyes, searching, yearning, expecting to be whisked away to some distant, unexplored region where only love abided. She knew that such a place existed and she knew that Aiden Kincaid McAllister would be the one to take her there. Patience was becoming her nemesis but she realized that whenever the journey to utter bliss began, she would never want it to end. So, she waited, gazing into his mesmerizing eyes, as time passed them by with the floating clouds above, while her hopeful heart anticipated the captivating moment when his lips found hers.

Then, as if snatched from his trance, Caid lifted his head back to the summit of the Enchanted Rock and said with great excitement, “Come on!”

“Where?” Marty asked, filled with that same excitement as he took her hand and pulled her toward the giant pink mass.

At this level on the ground, where the rocks dotted the path that countless others had taken many times before these two had, the climb did not appear daunting. And as they ascended, there seemed to be stairs of rock formations that led them to the top of the great rock, which they followed without even perspiring or breathing hard.

When they found the plateau, Caid pulled her over the domed top to the other side of the giant rock where he stopped and they stood marveling at the view. They could see for miles in all directions, the mountains, valleys, rivers and finally the plains spread out in front of them as if painted on a canvas by God’s loving hand.

They could see the wagon train headed north-west, which appeared to Marty to be a toy. She leaned over the edge of the rock and waved as if the miniscule people that walked below could see her and would wave back.

Caid pointed at her wagon and a tiny Sera Dear walking beside it and he encouraged Marty to yell at it, to say ‘hello’.

Giddy with excitement, she paused while clapping her hands together. For an instant, she remembered that day in the Gulf of Mexico with Papa and seeing Texas for the first time. Back then, she had thought that the sight of the new land was the door to Heaven for the elders had called it the Promised Land. But looking at the vast open landscape before her while she stood on top of that enormous rock, she finally understood that, as far as she could see was God’s promise, Germany’s promise, Papa’s promise. And now it was her legacy to attain and appreciate.

She pulled in a deep breath, filling her lungs with the pure Texas air. Then she threw her head back and exhaled the word with all the gusto that she could muster.

“Hello!” she called as loud as she could. She was surprised to hear the echo of her own voice bouncing off the canyon walls near the rock where they stood. She repeated her word of greeting, spreading it out so that the echo would last longer.

The canyon answered back in her voice with ever-fading definition but with the ever-present duplication of the last syllable, “Hello-o-o-o.”

She giggled at the sound of her own voice yelling back at her and then she yelled, “This is beautiful!”

The canyon responded, mimicking her words and emphasizing ‘beautiful’ as she had, but evaporating into the wind with a ringing repetition of ‘ful’.

“You’re beautiful,” Caid declared as he pulled her close to him and encased her in his arms. He could feel her heartbeat quicken against his chest, repeating the chorus that echoed in his own heart, a whispered reverberation that bounced back and forth between them in a song that kept cadence with their synchronized hearts,
I love you! I love you! I love you!

“You’re so beautiful, Marty,” he found himself repeating just above a whisper, his voice raspy with the emotions that welled up inside him.

She raised her face toward him and opened her mouth to thank him or to disagree with him, she couldn’t decide which. But, he did not give her the chance to say anything, for he leaned into her and pressed his lips to hers. She found her hands gliding up to the back of his neck and then swirling into the long, silky curls that fell over his shirt collar.

When he pulled away to look into her eyes, the wind caught his hair and whipped it into a flurry of dark waves around his head, leaving the black curls to fall into his eyes, giving him an almost boyish appearance. Marty could not help but love that face; that strong chiseled chin, that straight and perky nose, those sun-kissed cheeks, those heavenly blue eyes, and most of all, those full, luscious, kissable lips.

Caid stared down at her, memorizing her every crevice, every curve of her breathtaking face. He filled his heart with her scent, which the wind carried to him with loving breaths of gentle breezes. He drank in the liquid blue of her eyes that she blinked languidly against the whirling tufts of her auburn hair that tangled into her long black lashes, causing tears to form. Feeling her fingers pressing into his flesh, his mind switched from admiring her beauty to telling her what was in his heart and he knew that he could keep silent no longer.

He had longed to repeat the words over and over from the moment that he first saw her and each moment that he spent with her. His heart already pounded them in his chest, sometimes quietly and sometimes so loudly that he thought that she could hear it, but its rhythmic tempo sang
I love you! I love you! I love you!
from dawn until dusk and then it serenaded him in his dreams at night. It was a wonderful melody, but he yearned to sing it aloud, to shout it to the world, to whisper it upon her bare skin.

As if a cloud had darkened them, the twinkle in his eyes disappeared and a serious expression crossed his face as he took her hand into his and he said in a soft, almost trembling voice, “I love you.”

Finally, he had said the words that Marty had hungered to hear. She devoured them in a quick sigh of joy and her smile widened, indicating to him that she was truly pleased to have him say them. She tangled her fingers into his hair, clasping them as if fastening him to herself forever and her eyes welled up with tears of happiness. She was not surprised by her answer nor was she ashamed to admit to him the same confession, “I love you.”

A kiss did not complete their mutual declaration of affection as she had hoped, but instead, Caid reared back and yelled at the top of his lungs, “I
love
you!”