Sins of Summer (10 page)

“Ha! You’d never get them to believe that. Have you forgotten that I’m a strumpet, a loose, immoral woman? They think the
only reason a man would want
me
—to marry me, that is—is for my shares in the company.”

Ben raised his brows, and piercing, sunlight-squinted eyes, that seemed endowed with the ability to look a hole right through
a person, wandered over her face.

“Then they are fools,” he said softly.

A curious stillness followed—a waiting, uneasy silence that deepened and pushed them apart. Only the green thick-lashed eyes
and the faint color that spread across her cheeks betrayed the fact that she was shaken by their exchange.

“Why are you surprised that a man would want you for yourself?” Something like a smile crossed his face as he continued to
study her thoughtfully.

“I’m not so dumb that I don’t know they would want me for a few other things beside my shares in the company. Up here men
outnumber women ten to one.” Her voice was just a breath of a whisper, a bitter whisper. “They’d not care a whit about
me
or my feelings or my dreams or my child. Most men up here want a woman for cooking and washing and… bed.” She scurried around
him to the door. “I’ll go make the poultice to go on Odette’s chest.”

Without thinking to pick up the lamp, she went out into the dark hall and felt her way down the stairway to the kitchen. She
wished desperately she could take back her angry unguarded words. They had revealed more than she had wanted him to know.
She hoped to God he was unaware of the turbulent feeling his presence inspired.

A sharp feeling of apprehension struck Dory as she prepared the poultice. Ben Waller’s presence was beginning to mean everything
to her. The fact that he monopolized her thoughts petrified her. He could engulf her, crush her, set a fire that would consume
her, and crush what little spirit she had left. She couldn’t allow that to happen for Jeanmarie’s sake.

Her hands stilled and she stood with bowed head. She had to get her mind off the man and put a lid on thoughts that perhaps,
just perhaps, he might be attracted to her, or she’d be in for more heartache than she could handle.

Ben settled his horse in an empty stall and went into the bunkhouse attached to the barn. He was not looking forward to a
face-off with Milo and was relieved when he saw that only Wiley was in the room. The old man was sitting on his bunk rubbing
his leg. Ben shrugged out of his coat and hung it and his hat on a nail beside the door.

“Coffee there in the pot.” Wiley’s eyes peered up at him from beneath bushy brows.

“Thanks.”

“Ya stayin’ the night?” Wiley asked after Ben filled a tin cup and sat down at the table.

“Yeah. Milo leave out?”

“He hightailed it out of here madder than a cornered bobcat.” Wiley’s chuckle was dry as corn shucks. “Ya must’a put a burr
under his tail.”

“He fired me. Ordered me off the place.”

“Ya goin’?”

“My girl is sick. As soon as she’s better we’ll leave.”
My girl.
The first year he and Odette had been together he had been unable to say those words. Now they slipped out of his mouth easily…
and he meant them.
My girl. My daughter.

“Louis’ll be put out.”

“That’s too bad.”

“Milo ain’t got no sense when it comes ta what’s in his britches. Messin’ ’round the little missy, was he?”

“That’s right. He came to within a hair of getting himself killed.” Ben drained his cup, sat down on a bunk and took off his
boots.

“Glad it didn’t happen. Least ways… not that way. Louis would a swore Milo caught ya fornicatin’ with Dory an’ stirred folks
up agin ya. Might’a got ya hung.”

“I didn’t think of that at the time, but if I had it wouldn’t have mattered. I’d a killed the sonofabitch without batting
an eye if he’d forced himself on Odette.”

After Wiley blew out the lamp, Ben lay down on the bunk, put his hands behind his head and stared at the dark ceiling. He
had always had a boundless respect for women in spite of his unpleasant childhood with an aunt who resented every bite of
food that went into his mouth. Women, as a rule, had been kind to him, even the ones considered
bad.
He figured they had been made that way by circumstances and did what they had to do to survive.

The verbal and physical abuse heaped on Dory by her half-brothers bothered him—more than bothered him. It made him want to
break heads.

“Is Malone the father of Miss Callahan’s little girl?” Ben voiced the question as it came to his mind.

“I reckon it was his boy, Mick.” Wiley’s voice came out of the darkness. “It was ’bout a year after Dory’s pa died. She’d
been to town for a few months of schoolin’. When she got back, James was gone an’ Louis an’ Milo was mean as a steer with
its tail in a knot. Dory was scared of ‘em an’ lonesome. She started meetin’ the boy. A few months later she found him with
the back of his head blowed off. Folks thought he’d been took for a deer, an’ some thought it was Milo what done it, but there
warn’t no proof. He an’ Louis got a powerful hate for the Malones.”

“Was that before or after the baby was born?”

“Before. Long time before. I doubt the lad knew he’d made a babe.”

In the silence that followed, Ben mulled over what Wiley had said. There was no doubt in his mind and there appeared to be
none in Dory’s that Milo would backshoot a man. A demon was working in Milo and sooner or later, if he stayed here, Ben was
almost sure he and Milo would clash.

He suddenly thought about what he’d heard the men at the mill talking about. A few months back a young Indian girl’s body
had been found not five miles from the camp. She had been violated and the back of her head had been bashed in. The killer
had made no attempt to hide the body, probably thinking the wolves that roamed the area would destroy it. The girl had been
found not long after her death by a lumberjack who had used snowshoes to make the long trip down the mountain one Sunday to
spend a few hours with his family.

Ben didn’t know what had brought that to mind. There was no evidence to lay that crime at Milo’s door, but as Ben remembered
the look that had been on Milo’s face when he had struck his sister, he believed that Milo was capable of most anything.

On the heels of that thought came another. Tonight he had been thoroughly confused by his feelings for Dory Callahan. She
had awakened something in him, stirred something that left him restless. He remembered the graceful movement of her body as
she went up the stairs ahead of him. She was tall and thin and swayed like a young sapling in the breeze. Her eyes were clear,
honest and free of suspicion when she looked at him. He liked the proud lift of her chin, the wide green eyes and even the
short curly mop that covered her head.

He ran stiffened fingers through his hair and massaged the back of his neck. He couldn’t let the attraction he felt for the
woman get out of hand. He was having too hard a time taking care of himself and Odette to take on a woman and her child. Yet
he couldn’t help but wonder how it would be to make love to her if she were totally his. Was Dory Callahan the kind of woman
her brothers said she was, or was she a woman who would love a man wholeheartedly or not at all?

His thoughts went to Odette. The sensible thing to do would be to ride out of here as soon as she was able. He’d find a place
to settle, and with what tools he had, he could make a living doing cabinet work. Of course, it would mean he couldn’t produce
doors, window frames and flooring in quantity, but it would be a start.

He drifted to sleep with his common sense telling him to go far from this place and quick, but some unnerving, alien thing
inside him told him he could not leave just yet.

The squeak of the door opening awakened Ben from a sound sleep. Before turning his head toward the sound, his hand closed
over the hilt of the knife that lay by his side. A soft triangle of light came through the partly open door, then a long skirt
and fur-lined moccasins. Dory, carrying a lantern, came silently across the room to his bunk.

“Mr. Waller. Ben—” Her whispered voice held urgency.

“Yes. What is it?”

“I’m worried about Odette. She’s awfully sick.”

Ben slung his legs off the bed and reached for his boots. “She was sleeping when I left.”

“She slept for a while. But now it’s hard for her to breathe.”

“You been up with her all night?”

“I dozed in a chair for a while.”

Ben followed Dory across the room and out the door. They hurried across the moonlit yard to the house. The kitchen was warm
and well lighted. Carrying the lantern, Dory went through the hallway and up the stairs.

As soon as Ben stepped inside the room he could hear Odette’s labored breathing. He knelt down beside the bed and placed his
hand on her forehead. It was not extremely hot and he felt a second of relief that turned to anxiety when her lids lifted
and she gazed at him with wide blank eyes. Her mouth was open and her lips quivered as she struggled to draw air into her
lungs.

“I changed the poultice and rubbed her neck with liniment,” Dory said from close beside him.

“I can smell it.”

“At first she would drink a little peppermint tea. She won’t do that now.”

“Where’s the nearest doctor?”

“The only place I know for sure is Coeur d’Alene. That’s a day’s ride from here.”

“Damn! It would take two days to get a doctor here.”

“We’ve got to do something now. My pa died while James was going for the doctor. Maybe if we raised her up she could breathe
easier.”

Ben slipped his arm under Odette’s shoulders and lifted her while Dory packed pillows behind her. He looked into the worried
face of the woman beside him, grateful that she was with him. The silence between them was only broken by the sound of Odette’s
labored breathing until a loud voice came from downstairs. They heard heavy footsteps coming up the stairs.

“Dory!” Ben turned to face the man that came charging into the room like a mad bull. “What the hell’s going on?”

“James, for goodness sake! Stop shouting. You’ll wake Jeanmarie.”

James’s eyes went from Dory to Ben. “You’re the donkey man?”

Ben stood slowly. “I’m getting damned tired of being called the donkey man,” he said irritably. “I’ve got a name. It’s Ben
Waller.”

“Sorry. Meant no offense. I’m James Callahan. It scared me when I saw the house all lit up this time of night. I thought something
had happened to the little carrot-top.”

“I need someone to go for a doctor. I’ll pay fifty dollars a day.”

Ignoring Ben, James came to peer at Odette over Dory’s shoulder. “From the sound of her breathin’, it’s what Pa had, huh,
Dory?”

“I don’t know. I put a lard and turpentine poultice on her chest. I’ve given her whiskey toddies and she drank peppermint
tea, but it hasn’t helped.”

James took off his coat and threw it on the floor beside the door. He leaned over Odette and put his ear to her chest.

He looked squarely at Ben. “Mister, she’s got a rattle in her chest. She’ll not last till a doctor gets here unless we can
break up that congestion so she can breathe.”

“How can we do that?” Dory asked.

“Steam. I’ve seen it work a couple of times. A Blackfoot Indian used it on a camp cook last winter.”

“I’ll be obliged for your help,” Ben said. “Tell me what to do.”

“Well… we don’t have a sweat lodge. We’ll have to do the next best thing. Waller, get an armload of wood and fire up the stove.
Sis, bed the baby down in another room and bring up a teakettle of hot water from the reservoir.”

James knelt down beside the bed and put the back of his hand to Odette’s cheek. Her skin was dry and hot, her parted lips
parched. He poured water on a cloth from the pitcher on the table and wet her lips. Odette’s eyes fluttered open and James
found himself looking into large blue eyes.

“Can you drink some water?” James asked before he remembered that he had been told that Waller’s daughter couldn’t hear. He
squeezed some of the water from the cloth into her mouth. She licked her lips gratefully. Her eyes clung to his face. His
heart galloped and he sucked in a deep breath. The girl’s clear, trusting eyes seemed to be looking into his very soul. They
remained open while he sponged water into her mouth. When her lids drifted down, James felt a moment of panic as if something
precious were slipping away.

Ben filled the barrel stove and closed the firebox door. The sound brought James to his feet. His fingers brushed the dark-auburn
curls from his forehead. For a minute or two he had lost himself. Dory came in with the teakettle. James lifted one of the
two lids on the barrel stove and she set the kettle directly over the flame.

“We need something to make a tent close to the stove.” James looked about the room. “She can lie on the quilt box lid. Get
three chairs from the kitchen, Waller. Two to support the board, one for her feet.” Ben didn’t question; he hurried out of
the room.

“Oh, James. I’m so glad you’re here.” Dory hugged her brother’s arm.

He looked down and patted her hand. His brows came together in a puzzled frown.

“What did you do to your face?”

“Oh, that.” She covered her swollen jaw with her palm. “I got in a hurry and bumped it on the… door.”

James’s face relaxed. “What do we have that we could spread some blankets over to hold in the steam?”

“The folding bar you bought for me to dry the baby’s napkins when I couldn’t hang them outside. I cover it sometimes and let
Jeanmarie play under it.”

“That’s just the ticket. Get it, Sis. I’ll get blankets out of the other rooms.”

Dory paused in the doorway of the kitchen. Ben stood with his hand grasping the back of a chair, his head bent. She went to
him and placed her hand on his arm. He looked at her with eyes filled with misery.

“I’ve never even told her how important she is to me.”

“She knows. She loves you very much.”