Medicine Road (20 page)

The mountain man waited while his hardgalloping thoughts raced to catch up with the half
relief, half alarm created by the girl's astonishing
outburst. At the moment he was too concerned with
Lacey's and his own emotions to sort out the peculiar significance in her remarks about Tim O'Mara.
And when his question came, it was deliberately
and carefully off trail. "How old are you, Lacey?"

Her laugh was low, but not that low it hid the
hardness in it. "Thirty-one, Jesse. 'Most thirty-two."

He had asked her only to change the subject,
hadn't expected that heavy an answer. "God
A'mighty, honey, a body'd never guess it. You look
eighteen."

"I don't feel eighteen, Jesse, and that's another
thing." The bitterness was gone now, in its place a
sort of dull acceptance. "You look thirty and probably aren't a day over twenty-five. That's a lot of difference when it's on the woman's side."

He started to tell her he was a full thirty-three,
trapped the admission with a snap of his white
teeth, sealed it in with one of his quick grins. "Hell,
Lacey, I not alone look thirty, I feel fifty. I've been
night-sleeping the prairie by my lonesome for so
damn' long it feels like I been waiting for a woman
the past twenty years. Lacey, I reckon it ain't going
to save you if you're forty. I aimed to make me a
stake outen this trip and I got that stake more'n
made, honey. I'll clear a thousand dollars on the peltries I brought down from Three Forks alone. Then I
got a five-hundred-dollar bonus coming for getting
some gunpowder through to Jim Bridger up to the fort. Cripes, we'll have more money than ticks on a
sick elk!"

She kept quiet a long time then. Finally her words
were thought out, careful. "I've had a bad life, Jesse.
I guess you can tell that. I've not had a man the real
way. I feel I could have you that way, Jesse, and I
want to think we'd find the best kind of love together. But the way it is, I just can't quite dare myself
into believing it. Jesse, I just can't!" After a moment,
she went on. "I don't know anything we can do, either. My folks have got to travel on, tomorrow. Your
train has got to keep going to Fort Bridger. We're
just moving in opposite directions, Jesse...

"Lacey, will you leave Tim if I come back to
Laramie for you?"

"Jesse! Please don't talk to me like that!"

The sudden fierceness shooting through her
words narrowed the mountain man's eyes, put the
blood, thick and hammering, into his throat. His
great hands took her arms, high up, burrowing their
hard talons into the warm hollows of her armpits,
his mouth, wide and cruel as any Sioux's, smashing
her soft lips apart, writhing and thirsting for the
sweetness of them.

She threw her head, fiercely breaking the bruising
kiss, surging back from him. Instantly his arms were
behind her, trapping her against him, the swift
hands flashing down to seize and crush her into
him. She came to him then, her lips finding his, her
round arms circling his cording neck, her body coming up to meet his, frantically hungry for a thing it
had never known.

The lumpy, three-quarter moon, loppy and tired as a
cantaloupe that has lain too long on the vine, took a polite yawn and went sliding into the hills across
the Black Fork. The peepers in the fringe grass lowered their wracking song to a drowsy hum. Somewhere down the slough, a plover raised his plaintive
night song. Out on the prairie, beyond the river, a
sage hen muttered sleepily.

In the creeping shadow of the cottonwood log,
other voices paced the slowing rhythm of the
prairie night.

"Getting late, Lacey honey."

"Yes, I know...."

"I allow we'd best be moving back."

"Yes....

Jesse rolled up on one elbow, lay there looking
down on her, the last wanness of the dropping
moon dappling them with its pale glow. Lacey lay
quietly, one arm thrown across her eyes, the other
slipping around the mountain man's bare shoulder.
Her fingers moved over the carved sinews, lingered
wonderingly along the swelling curve of the bicep.
There was no heat in the fingers now, no frantic urgency. Their slow coolness felt like nothing Jesse
had ever felt on him. He came into their touch, easing his body back down until it lay again against
Lacey's.

The freshness and fragrance of her washed over
him once more, but now, long and lazy, like lowering your body into mossy spring water. He pillowed
his head in the crook of her arm, pressing his dark
cheek gratefully into the moving swell of her cool
breast.

"Lacey...

"Yes, Jesse?"

"You remember all we said?"

"I remember...."

The peepers took over, filling the little silence.

"We'll leave it that way, honey. Like we last said."

"Yes, Jesse."

"You'll go on with Tim and your folks, back to
Laramie. I allow you'll make it without no trouble
from the Injuns. And I'll be back for you real sudden. We'll all of us, the kids and you and me, strike
out for Californy. You'd like that, wouldn't you,
Lacey? Taking up where your folks left off, going on
out to the Californy coast?"

"Yes, oh, yes, I would, Jesse. And I'll go with you."

"Sure, honey. We know how we feel, now. That's
the biggest part of it."

"It's the whole part, Jesse. You're the only man
I've ever loved like this. I want that, Jesse. I want it
for the rest of my life."

"Me, too, Lacey gal."

He rolled back with the tense whisper, letting her
come into him, the wide mouth seeking under the
yellow hair, finding the lobe of the small ear, a muttered phrase of endearment coming with the kisslong-drawn, fierce, relentless.

The stream of Lacey O'Mara's mind had tumbled in
a millrace of confusion from the moment she had
looked up to meet Jesse's level stare across Paiute
Slough. From the first of the dry tears canonizing
the crude couch of the settlement wedding night,
her life had dropped into that half-dead hell to
which so many frontier women found themselves
delivered twenty-four hours after some circuitriding God-talker had hustled through the holy
words to drop the Good Book and run for the
whiskey barrel.

Looking up to see the red-haired mountain man and the smoke-gray Sioux mare across that prairie
bathing pool, the picture innermost in any lovecheated woman's mind had slotted into its golden
frame just as true and clear as ever that of any
olden captive and despairing princess in storied
ivory tower. That rat-tailed, mud-dirty snare with
her popped eyes, rack-of-bone ribbing, and hipshot
stance was the milkiest of white steeds. And most
certainly that split-oak post of a rider, lantern jaw,
lank hair, grimy Sioux moccasins and all, was the
knightliest of armored errants.

Now, gliding toward the cherry glow of the
wagon fire, her heart high with the excitement of the
promise she had just concluded with Jesse, Lacey
was suddenly terrified. The crouching figure hovering near the fire, its shadow bulking man-big
against the rough boards of the wagon's tailgate,
shoulder-shot her running dreams, dead center.
Tim! God in heaven! Somehow he had missed her,
somehow been aroused from his sodden sleep, was
hunkered there, waiting for her. For a crazy moment
she thought of turning back, finding Jesse, facing
the whole thing out, here and now. A child's restless
whimpering caught up the skirt of her impulse,
sharpened her wide eyes.

The figure by the fire turned to reveal its craggy
hawk's face, the small bundle clutched to her breast.
The squaw! The big Arapaho squaw. Thank God.
She was still there.

Lacey came to the fire, sinking down by the Indian woman, holding her finger to her lips, nodding
toward the wagon bed and the rising snores of its
occupant. The tall squaw nodded back, with a quick
smile held forth the figure of the sleeping Kathy,
close-wrapped in the pile of the black buffalo robe.

"Baby much better. Baby good now." The stilted
words came in a grunt as deep as any brave's.

Lacey glanced at the child, noting the half smile
on the little face, the peaceful, easy pace of her
breathing. Dear God, she did look better. For the
first time in weeks, Lacey O'Mara felt the sudden
jump of mother hope. Her bright return smile to the
Arapaho woman conveyed that hope.

"Ilau," grunted the squaw, carefully shouldering
out of the heavy robe, bundling the child in it, placing her gently by the fire. Under the robe, the squaw
was garbed in a slipover of tanned doeskin. From the
breast of this she now drew a small doll, a strangely
ugly thing, its warped features and small, twisted
limbs fashioned entirely of dried buffalo hide.

"Hanpospu hoksicala," said the Indian woman.
"Holy doll, Sioux medicine doll. Very big medicine."

With the words, she placed the crude figurine in
the robe with Kathy. The child turned in her sleep,
smiled, snuggled the grotesque image in her thin
arms. The squaw stared at the infant a moment,
raised her narrow eyes to Lacey.

"Me go, now. Come back soon. Come back with
the light. With the sun."

"Oh, thank you," the emigrant woman's gratitude
hurried out, "but you can't! I mean it won't do any
good. You see, we're leaving in the morning. We're
going to travel on. My wagons are going away then,
you see? But I do thank you ... uh...." The white
girl paused, wanting to use the name of her new
companion.

"Elk Woman. My name Elk Woman."

The squaw extended her hands across the fire,
smiling. Lacey seized them impulsively.

"God bless you, Elk Woman. I know my baby is better. Oh, thank you so much!" Her eyes falling on
the buffalo-hide doll, Lacey added anxiously: "Can
she keep the little doll, Elk Woman? See how she
cuddles it already."

"Hau," grunted the squaw, easing to her feet, "she
keep. Me come back. Go, now."

"But ..." Lacey started to repeat her explanation
of the emigrant departure, only for the Indian
woman to hold up both hands, palms out, asking for
silence.

"Me come back with sun. Stay with baby. She get
well."

"But, Elk Woman..."-it was clear the Indian
had failed to grasp the content of Lacey's straightspoken English, did not understand the camp was
moving-"we are leaving. We go tomorrow. See?
You can't stay with us."

"Me travel with you." The big squaw shrugged
simply. "Go get medicine leaves now. Come back
and travel with Wasicun goddams. Baby get strong."

"You mean you'll stay with us? Travel along with
the wagons? Nurse the baby?"

"Hau." The squaw nodded vigorously. "My
braves downriver hunting buffalo. Maybe six, seven
suns. Me go that far. Meet braves. Baby well, then."

"Oh, you'll stay with us till we meet your warriors. They're hunting down the trail. Haul" The
white woman used her first Indian word with awkward hopefulness.

"Hau! Haul"

"It would be wonderful! How can I ever thank
you, Elk Woman?"

Lacey's eyes were shining, her face high-flushed
with color. When a person's luck turned, it seemed
to turn all at once. Surely Lacey O'Mara's had turned today, for the first time in three long years. It
had turned with the arrival of the lean, red-haired
mountain man, and with the dramatic appearance
of this tall, black-skinned Indian woman. God bless
both of them!

"You no thank Elk Woman," answered the squaw.
"Me love baby. All baby!"

With her statement, her sharp eyes shifted to the
shadows near the back of the canvas tailgate shelter.
Stepping past Lacey, she bent over the sleeping form
of Johnny O'Mara. Lovingly the Indian woman
tucked the threadbare blankets around the youngster.
When she had them just right, she placed her right
hand on the boy's forehead, whispering intently:

"Han mani wolkota, Ya Slo. Hdiyotanka!"

And with that, she was gone, fading into the outer
darkness with all the noise of a cut-throat trout sliding out of a sun dapple into deep water.

Lacey looked after her, smiling happily.

For the sake of that smile, it was the Lord's blessing the white girl was ignorant of the Arapaho
tongue. All Lacey understood was that Elk Woman
loved all children, and had paused to say an Indian
blessing over little Johnny. Well, maybe it was a sort
of a blessing, at that. Johnny O'Mara had a cheery
whistle, practiced its art more or less constantly.
With true Indian direction Elk Woman had taken
the habit and made a name for the Wasicun boy. She
had used this name in muttering what Lacey so
trustingly imagined to be her parting blessing to
him. Could Jesse Callahan have heard it, every hair
on his red head would have rattled in its root socket.
Han mani wolkota, Ya Slo. Hdiyotanka! "Walk in the
night with peace, Little Whistler. Soon you are going
away with me!"

Jesse got back to the Choteau company wagons
about 1:00 A.M., rolled into his blankets, slept like a
shot soldier until 4:00.

Rousing at that hour, he padded through the dark
toward the looming shadow of the lead wagon. He
waited a second, adjusting his eyes to the gloom,
bent quickly over the wagon master's huddled form,
touched the tight-wrapped blankets lightly.