Just Once (23 page)

“I thought I was in love with Amelia, but by the time she left, I was happy to see her go. I didn’t know how to end it and she saved me the trouble.”

“You’re saying you don’t care for me at all?” She had gone beyond humiliation, lost her grip and slipped over the edge. She was falling and needed to grab on to a lifeline. “I’ve seen something else in your eyes when you look at me, Hunter. Something you aren’t willing to own up to.”

“I care too much,” he said softly. “That’s why I have to leave. I can’t take your love—which is what will surely happen if I stay. I don’t want to wake up some morning knowing I made a mistake, wishing I’d gone after my dream.”

She knew all about dreams. She had wanted to follow hers so badly that she had walked out of her old life, never knowing that the respite from her father’s world would change her forever. If she went back, she knew she would no longer be content with hours of embroidery, tedious tea parties, social calls, pretentiousness.

Yes, she knew about dreams.

He was right—he had to go. She understood, and still it hurt. All of her anger and desperation ebbed to a dull ache that lodged in her heart.

“Go then,” she whispered, turning to stare across the Mississippi, furious at him, at herself, at fate. “Go after your dream, Hunter Boone.”

“Jemma—”

She felt his hand on her shoulder and shook him off.

“Don’t touch me. Please.”

“Walk back with me.”

She shook her head no. “I don’t want to be there when you tell them. I’ll … I’ll go back to Nette’s alone.”

“You can stay here in Sandy Shoals as long as you want, Jemma.”

“I know that.”

“Maybe if—”

“Don’t even say it, Hunter.” She held up her hand, the gesture a plea, a warning. “Don’t make me hope when there isn’t any.”

“Won’t you at least turn around and tell me good-bye?”

She whirled around and let him see the icy tears she had been hiding before she wiped them away. Her hands were freezing, her heart a frozen lump in her chest. She had realized that her dream, and now the very heart of it, was slipping away.

“Tell me you don’t want me,” she said.

“You know I do. Let me go, Jemma.”

“Kiss me good-bye, Hunter. Kiss me one last time so you’ll have something to think about out there on your damned frontier.”

For a heartbeat she was certain he was going to deny her. She could see him warring with his emotions, see the need flaring in his eyes—a need as deep and yearning as her own. Suddenly, as if afraid he might change his mind, Hunter reached for her, slipped his hands beneath her cloak, and dragged her into his arms. She cupped his face. His cheeks were cold. She welcomed his lips. They were warm. She threw aside restraint and melded herself against his hard length.

His mouth slashed across hers. What he demanded, she gave. What she offered, he took. This was no gentle kiss. This was an all-out assault on each other’s senses. As she opened to him, as their tongues touched, circled, delved, and tasted, she committed it all to memory.

She ran her hands through his hair. Her breath was coming hard and fast, like his. She felt him shift his stance, press his hard manhood against her. His hands slid up along her ribs; the heat of his palms through her gown rebuffed the cold night air. When his thumb teased the underside of her breast, Jemma wrapped her arms around his neck. He cupped her breasts, teased her nipples—hard, aching buds beneath the silk. Her need shot through her—lightning-swift need that rocked her and started a sweet, aching pulse between her thighs. She moaned against his mouth.

He tried to pull away.

His breath was as ragged and rough as her own. He reached up, took hold of her wrists, and pulled her arms away from his neck. Standing there in the dark, he held her wrists in his hands and stared down into her eyes. In the darkness, his eyes were colorless, black, haunted by warring needs.

“I’ve got to do this, Jemma.”

“I know,” she whispered.

She thought he was going to release her—and started to close her eyes so that she wouldn’t have to watch him walk away. Then, standing a foot away, he bent down and touched his lips to hers once more. The kiss was light as milkweed down, as quick as the tick of a clock stealing time. Then it was over.

Jemma wrapped her cloak tightly around her, its warmth wanting compared to his embrace, and left him standing there beside the river.

For the first time in his life, Hunter felt completely alone. Alone with only his dream for comfort. As he watched Jemma disappear down the path, heading toward Nette’s cabin, part of him wanted to call her back, to beg her to forgive him and forget everything he had just said. But he would only be prolonging the inevitable.

No matter what she said, no matter how logical her argument, they had to go their separate ways. She was from another world. Sooner or later, the novelty of life in Sandy Shoals would wear thin; when she was facing the everyday hardships without naive enthusiasm, she would think differently.

He took a deep breath and waited for the frigid air to cool his blood. He should have known better than to kiss her again, but the hard truth was that he had reached the point where he couldn’t deny her or himself any longer. Watching her throughout the celebration tonight, he knew that if he stayed one more day, if he had spent one more hour with Jemma, he would have thrown caution to the wind and taken her to his bed. There would have been no turning back. He would never have been able to leave her.

He should have asked her for the name of a saint who might help get him through the next hour. He wished like hell he could walk away right now, simply disappear into the forest. But first he needed to collect his gear and provisions. And he owed his family more. They loved him. Above all else, there was that.

He had to go back to the post and tell them that he was leaving at dawn’s first light. He had to say good-bye, kiss Hannah and the little ones, endure Nette’s tears and the abandonment in Lucy’s eyes. He had to say good-bye, knowing as he did that there was a very real possibility it would be the last time he would ever see any of them again.

Chapter 17

Upper-Missouri Wilderness, March 1817

A dream can be a very cold and lonely thing, not unlike the snow that reflected blue-white beneath the sun as Hunter rode across the open plain, leading his pack mules behind him. He had grown used to listening to the sound of his own breath, watching it fog on the sharp, cold air.

There was a storm coming on. He could feel it in his bones, smell it. After waking up mornings with no real plan except to keep moving and stay alive, he even welcomed the necessity of searching for a place to take shelter.

Squinting against the sun, he studied what appeared to be a thin, white ribbon of smoke against the sky. There were Mandan winter camps nearby; he had passed some of the villages and found the people curious and eager to trade. Hunter headed toward the smoke and finally came to a rise that overlooked a shallow valley chiseled out between two foothills. The smoke rose from a crude chimney made of river rock atop a structure half-planted into the side of a hill.

He called out a loud “Hallo!” but no one returned his greeting. Other than the echo of his own shout reverberating against the hills, and the distant call of a magpie, there wasn’t another sound in the valley. He nudged his roan and rode toward the dugout.

Up close, he found that the dwelling was little more than a hovel. Rough pine logs formed the front. The sides butted into the hill, a hybrid of a dugout. Certainly not built for permanence, it had been fashioned by someone with no talent for building. As he dismounted and tied his horse to a nearby pine, he took a good look at the structure. There wasn’t one decent corner saddle, the joint where the logs met. Luther, a zealot when it came to building log structures, would have been appalled. There was a feed crib in a lean-to that had once sheltered a horse or a mule, but it was empty now.

Far from eager to have his head blown off, Hunter called out and unsheathed his rifle as he walked toward the cabin. Except for the smoke from the chimney, there was no sign of life. With his hand on the door latch, he shouted again. Inside, someone coughed.

He tried the latch and found it unlocked. Rifle at the ready, he slowly pushed the door open. The interior of the place was not much bigger than the smokehouse at Sandy Shoals. The floor was cold, hard-packed earth. The few meager hand-hewn furnishings inside showed more poor attempts at woodworking. A thin piece of yellow hide covered the only window. Muted sunlight stained the greased window covering, but did little to light the room.

The place reeked of poorly cured furs, unwashed flesh, urine, and death. A bed was shoved up against the far wall. At first glance, Hunter thought it was empty. Then he heard the cough again, a weak, rasping sound. The tired struggle for breath made his own lungs ache in sympathy. The slight rise and fall of the bearskin atop the bed was hardly perceptible.

Despite a low fire, the room was still cold. Hunter crossed the dugout, curious to see what manner of man lay dying beneath the hide. The cough scarred the air again.

“Hello?” Hunter drew closer.

A weak, gravelly voice issued from beneath the hide. “If you’ve … come to kill me … be done with it.” Between bursts of speech, a man gasped for breath, drinking in air until he choked on it and coughed.

Hunter stepped up to the bed and looked down into the gaunt, skeletal face of an old man whose watery brown eyes were stained with pain. His skin was yellow-gray, his hands as thin as crows’ feet with blue veins that stood out like knotted rope. The sleeves of his buckskins were almost black, stiff with filth and age. Everything about the old-timer—his thin wisps of hair, his skin, his clothing—all seemed brittle, as if at a touch he would crumble to ash.

“I haven’t come to kill you.” Hunter hunkered down on one knee, wincing at the offensive smell.

“More’s the pity,” the man whispered.

“There’s a storm coming in. I was looking for a place to ride it out.” Hunter wondered if he could stand being shut up inside the fetid dugout even for an hour, let alone for the duration of a heavy storm.

“Suit … yourself.”

“Where’s your water? I’ll get you some,” Hunter volunteered after seeing the man’s cracked, dry lips. Tobacco-red bloodstains ran from the corners of his mouth, down his cheek. The filthy blanket beside his head was stained with his blood. Hunter wondered how he had managed to keep the fire going.

The old-timer shook his head. “No water. I don’t … want to drag this … this thing out any longer … than I have to.” He fell into frenzied coughing spasms that brought his wasted frame up off the bed and slammed it down again.

Hunter felt helpless in the face of such pain. Not a stranger to death, at seventeen he had lost his father. A few years later, his mother had been struck down by fever in only three days’ time. For either, there had been none of this pitiful, slow wasting. Swift, accidental death was commonplace on the frontier, where countless dangers lurked. He had never thought of a swift death as a stroke of luck before, but this old man’s immeasurable suffering was a death sentence he would not pass on to a dog.

“Are … you … alone?” The old man wheezed.

Hunter nodded, finally finding his voice. “I am. Name’s Hunter Boone.”

“Any … relation … to Daniel?”

“Distant cousins.”

“Never met him.” The old-timer’s eyes closed. He lay silent for so long that Hunter felt for a sign of life. “I ain’t … gone yet, more’s … more’s the pity. M’name’s Charlie … Tate. Make your … self … t’home.”

When the old man closed his eyes again and exhaled on another fit of coughing, Hunter straightened. He walked across the room and stood his Hawkin rifle in the corner near the door. Charlie Tate had drifted off into the world of pain and sickness that was devouring him.

Taking stock of the squalid room and its meager contents, Hunter decided to put his horse and mules up in the lean-to, unload his supplies, and secure his rig outside. There’d be less chance of his things getting infested with bedbugs and lice if he didn’t bring them in.

He picked up a few spindly pieces of wood, all that was left for the fire, and wondered how the old man could have managed to gather them at all. Stepping outside, Hunter welcomed the bite of the cold, fresh air, and filled his lungs, trying to overcome the lingering memory of the heavy stench he had left inside.

Settling the animals and unloading his gear had become so much a part of his daily routine that it took little effort and no thought. He took his line and walked to the little stream not far away. His luck running high, he caught two respectable trout with shimmering rainbow scales, strung them on a line, and carried them back to the lean-to, where he unpacked his skillet.

He laid a fire in the sheltered area between the animal hut and the dugout cabin, boiled water, and stick-cooked his trout. As he picked off the savory white fish, he studied the small space between the two structures, wondering if he could create a sheltered area for himself between them by using a tarp and wood to connect the two. It would be preferable to sleeping in filth.

Hunter had saved some fish for Charlie, though he doubted that the old man could eat more than a bite or two. As he picked up the warm skillet, he wished his conscience would let him avoid going back inside the hovel.

The place was as still as death, the fire nearly out. With the skillet in his hand, he stood over the bed and looked at what remained of Charlie Tate.

“I made some trout.” Hunter glanced at the trout in the pan. The black, sightless fish eye stared back at him.

The old man’s dry lips moved. “I can’t … eat. Nothin’ goes down.”

Feeling helpless, Hunter reached over and set the skillet on the table.

“I been thinkin’ …,” Charlie gasped. “A … man can … do a lot of thinkin’ when he’s dying. Who are you … Hunter Boone?”

Three months ago, Hunter thought he knew the answer. Now he wasn’t sure if he wasn’t so much a loner as just alone. He reckoned the old man wanted to hear another voice, needed something to take his mind off of his pain.

“I’m from Pennsylvania by way of Kentucky. Found a place on the Mississippi for my brother’s family. Started a trading post. When it looked like more and more folks would be moving into the area, I felt the need to move on. So here I am.”

A ragged breath ripped itself out of the old man’s throat. He whispered, “Wanderlust.”

“I guess,” Hunter shrugged and pulled a chair up beside the bed. “I couldn’t see myself putting down roots.”

“Couldn’t?”

“Can’t,” he amended. An uncomfortable feeling crept over him, one he wouldn’t dare admit to, or even dwell on.

“Go back—”

The words were uttered low, a thread of sound. Hunter leaned closer, held his breath against the stench. “What did you say?”

“Go back be … fore it’s too … late. This life … it’s fine when you’re … when you’re young and able. But,” Charlie shuddered, “… what’s … the point? … You gonna follow … one more river … ride over one more … mountain? They all … look alike after … a while.”

The old man’s words so closely echoed Hunter’s own thoughts of late that he wondered if Charlie Tate was able to read his mind.

“There’ll come a time when … when … you’ll get awful … tired of … hearing … your own heartbeat.” Collapsing into a coughing fit, Charlie raised a palsied hand to his lips and wiped away bloody spittle.

Hunter rubbed his hands on his thighs and looked around the squalid room. “Save your strength, old man.”

A strangled, cackle escaped Tate. “What for? I’m dyin’…. What good’s … my life been, if … I can’t pass on what … I learnt? You want to … end up like this?”

Exhausted, the old man lay panting for air. His fingers, with their long filthy nails, raked the bear-hide cover. Hunter looked away, studying the fire that was as inept at fighting the cold in the poorly chinked dugout as Charlie’s body was at fighting his disease. Hunter marveled at the workings of fate that had brought him to Tate’s door. The old trapper’s words echoed the thoughts his soul had wrestled with for weeks. What good was a life of wandering without purpose? He had made extensive notes and maps, but what good would they be to any man save himself?

He had gone into Kentucky with a goal. Exploring the upper Missouri, he had seen wonders of nature that made a man certain there was a God in heaven, but lately he’d begun to question what he was doing. He found himself listening for the sound of something besides wind and water, the hoot of an owl, the howl of a wolf. He had wandered for miles and months, trying like hell to get Jemma O’Hurley out of his mind and his heart, but she had been with him every step of the way. So, too, had Luther and all of the others.

“Is … it snowing … yet?”

Used to being alone with his thoughts, Hunter nearly came out of his skin when the old man spoke.

“Not yet. But it’s fixin’ to,” he told Charlie.

Charlie’s lips worked, opened, closed. He shivered. “I … want to sleep … outside,” he rasped.

Hunter was almost certain Charlie was out of his mind with pain, then suddenly, he was afraid he understood what the man was asking him to do. “What are you saying?”

“You … know what … I … I’m … saying. Take me outside. Let me fall asleep … out there. I can’t … no more pain.” With an effort so great that his forehead instantly beaded with sweat, Charlie brought his hand up off the hide and reached toward Hunter.

Hunter clasped the skeletal hand, which was little more than cold flesh and brittle bone. “I’m sorry, old man.”

Charlie writhed. He shuddered in pain. “I don’t … want your … your pity. If your horse went … went down, would you do any less … than … put him out of … of his … misery?” He was desperate, gasping for breath like a fish flung out on a riverbank. “Can’t do … this alone.”

His fingers tightened almost imperceptibly around Hunter’s hand. As if he gathered strength from the human contact, he found the courage to make his plea.

“Didn’t want to cheat death … until I knew … it was the end. Now … it’s too late for me to … do it … myself. I can see him. Waiting. In the shadows. Standin’ there. Laughin’. See him? Let me go … with my head up. Not lying here … in my own … filth.”

Charlie’s eyes closed and his head lolled on the pillow. He was still breathing, the sound terrible to hear.

Hunter stood up, paced the room, glanced now and again into the darkened corners. Death was indeed lurking in the room, waiting to take Charlie Tate. But when? How much longer would the old man have to endure? One day? Two? Ten? His body might not be ready to give up, even though his heart and soul were.

“
Take me outside
.”

He glanced over at the man on the bed. It would be easy to grant Charlie’s wish, but at what cost to his conscience?

If Jemma were here, she would pray for guidance, but he had never been one to pray. He knew nothing of any of the saints she was always talking about, nor did he know much about what was written in Lucy’s Bible, either. He and God pretty much left each other alone.

Hunter stood at the end of the bed and stared down at Charlie Tate. Even in sleep, the pain tore at the man’s lungs. The old trapper had been right about one thing. Hunter would never let an animal suffer this much pain.

He crossed the room, threw the door open, and looked out at the afternoon sky. The wind was blowing heavy, gray clouds into the valley, clouds that would thicken until they obscured the sky and snow began to fall. The old man wouldn’t last twenty minutes out there in his condition. Other than cold, he wouldn’t feel any pain as he drifted off to sleep.

After a heavy sigh, Hunter closed the door, his mind made up. Conscience be damned. He would wait until the snow started falling, then he’d carry Charlie outside. If God couldn’t forgive him for helping old Charlie along, then so be it.

He sat with the old trapper until the snow began to fall, waited for it to thicken, hoping death would take Charlie first and not force his hand—but fate refused to give him the easy way out. Hunter found a jug of whiskey beside a pile of furs, took a long pull off the jug, and let the liquor burn its way down his throat. Charlie was coughing again, moaning between spasms.