Sins of Summer (16 page)

Dory didn’t know how much time had passed until she became aware that she was holding him tightly and moving her hands over
his back. His whispered words had sent her senses reeling. She knew then that he was everything her soul had longed for. For
just an instant she felt his lips touching her hair. Then he was holding her away from his strength, the warmth of his body.
She kept her eyes on the hollow at the base of his brown throat.

“Feel better now?” he asked. “Are you still sore at me?”

“I wasn’t sore at you. I just felt as if I was losing everything. So much has happened lately.”

“You work hard and haven’t had much sleep.”

“I did last night. Odette is much better.”

“The thanks go to you and James. I would have lost her if not for you.”

“I don’t want thanks, Ben. James doesn’t either.” She wiped her eyes with her sleeve. “I think he likes Odette. He’s awfully
concerned about her.”

Ben was still while thoughts ran crazily through his mind. Finally he said, “I appreciate his concern.”

“Would you object if it was more than just… concern?” Dory asked quietly.

“It wouldn’t come to that,” Ben said, not quite believing what he was saying. “James is a man and Odette is just a kid.”

“She said she’d be seventeen this summer. Some women have a couple of children by the time they are seventeen.” Dory didn’t
think it necessary to mention that her own child had been born when she was that age.

“That may be, but James—”

“—James is twenty-four. He’s been doing a man’s work since he was fourteen. There’s not a better man anywhere than James even
if he is reckless… at times. He’s good and kind and works hard.”

“Hold it.” He shook her shoulders gently. “You don’t have to sell me on your brother. I like him. I’m grateful for what he
did for Odette. Don’t you think we’re getting the cart before the horse?”

Ben tried to make his voice light even though a premonition of rough water ahead engulfed him. He couldn’t let a man-woman
attachment develop between Odette and James without his knowing for sure who her father was. How the hell could he explain
that to Odette? There was another side of the coin, too. He had been with her for more than three years, and if it turned
out she wasn’t his daughter, a lot of people would read something wicked in that, and it could spoil Odette’s chance of marrying
a man of her choice.

Dory filled a plate with food for Odette and Ben took it up to her. By the time he returned, supper was on the table, and
he took his place beside Wiley. Jeanmarie, excited about having so much company and blissfully unaware of the tension at the
table, chatted on and on until Dory gently reminded her to eat her supper. The little girl was enjoying herself. The grown-ups
were not yelling at one another.

Dory listened to her daughter’s chatter with only half an ear. She was consumed with thoughts of what had happened between
her and Ben in the darkened hallway. For a brief, wild moment she had known his closeness, his warmth, smelled his scent,
had felt safe, even cherished. Then it was over.

Even while her body was touching his, she had felt him drawing away from her. And when they had talked about an attraction
between Odette and James, he had drawn even farther away and had put up a shield between them. He obviously didn’t think her
brother good enough for his daughter. Dory’s disappointment in him had been acute. She had felt as if the breath had been
sucked out of her.

If James isn’t good enough for his daughter, a woman with an illegitimate child would certainly never be good enough for him.

Dory raised her head. Her eyes were caught and held by Ben’s. Sober eyes beneath straight dark brows searched her face. She
felt something stir in the marrow of her bones and in the corner of her heart she had kept locked away. She recognized it
for what it was: a hunger for love, a yearning for someone to share her thoughts, her dreams, her burdens. She lowered her
eyes to her plate, afraid that her emotions would be too clearly revealed.

In her thoughts she talked to him.
Because of my reputation you think I’m tarnished, and I suppose I am to a certain extent. But I’m not one bit sorry for having
been with Mick. He needed me and I needed him. It just happened and afterward we both knew it had been wrong. Please don’t
hold that against me. Out of my sin that summer came the most precious thing in my life. How could I be sorry for that?

Dear Ben. Give yourself the chance to know me. I would love you with all my heart and soul—love your daughter as if she were
my own—stand beside you through good times and bad—work beside you all the days of our lives—

“Mama. Mama—”

“Sit still. I’ll get it, Sis.”

Dory looked up at James. “Get what?”

“Milk. Jeanmarie wants buttermilk.”

“I didn’t hear her. I must have been daydreaming.”

“It’s a easy plan, Ben,” Wiley was saying, and Dory wondered how long she had been in her dream world. “I could make ice tongs,
if I had a way to smooth them down.”

“I’ve no doubt of that. Your nails and wedges are as good as any I’ve seen anywhere.”

“Careful, Ben. Brag on this old buzzard too much and he’ll get to thinking he’s worth cash money.” James set a small glass
of buttermilk beside Jeanmarie’s plate and took his place at the table.

“Thank Uncle James, honey,” Dory prodded gently.

“Thank you.” Jeanmarie giggled happily. “I want to see Odette.” She tried to wriggle off her stool.

“Finish what you have on your plate first.”

Ben listened to Dory talk to her child. Her voice was musical as if she were trying to soothe an excited animal. She
is
a good mother, he thought, remembering his aunt reaching across the table and rapping his knuckles with a spoon if he as
much as dropped a crumb on the table or left a bite on his plate. Dory had not even spoken harshly to the child when, during
the noon meal, Jeanmarie had waved her spoon around and flung food over the table. Dory had taken the spoon from her hand
and reminded her that it should be left on her plate when she wasn’t using it.

Jeanmarie put the last bite of food from her plate into her mouth and looked expectantly at her mother. Dory lifted her off
the stool.

“We’ll go see how Odette is doing.”

James waited until he was sure his sister and Jeanmarie were on the way up the stairs before he spoke.

“I heard some news in Spencer today. McHenry told me that two more women have been killed—strangled and their heads bashed
in. One in Pitzer, one down on the Saint Joe. That makes three that they know of since Christmas.”

“Hell and damnation!” Wiley exclaimed. “Off and on fer the last few years there’s been stories ’bout murdered women. It’s
been laid to drunk Indians. One feller was hung ’cause he was last with a whore what was found in her bed with her throat
cut. Feller swore with his dyin’ breath he didn’t do it.”

“The latest were whores too.” James leaned back in his chair. “All the women were killed within twenty-five or thirty miles
of each other and according to the way they were killed, by the same man. McHenry has written to the territorial governor
asking him to send in a marshal.”

Ben’s quick mind honed in on one thing and fear washed over him like a wave of ice-cold water.

“Could it be a coincidence that the slain women were whores, or could it be that the killer chose them because of it?” Ben
looked James full in the face when he spoke.

“I hadn’t thought about it.”

Ben leaned his arms on the table. “I think we’d better think about it.”

“If you’ve got something on your mind, spill it.”

“The day I came here Louis told me that Dory’s child was born out of wedlock. He said her reputation was anything but lily
white, and said a few more things about what he suspected went on here when she was here alone.” As Ben talked, his expression
became angry, almost brutal. “At the camp I heard Milo referring to her as Whory Dory. The men, most of them, have no reason
not to believe Milo and think Dory is… well, that kind of woman.”

James jumped up from his chair. His dark face had turned livid with tight-lipped fury. He paced back and forth and Ben wondered
if he had been wise to lay it on the line all at once. Not
all
—he wouldn’t break his promise to Dory—but enough for James to realize the danger his sister was in.

“Those two are rotten to the core. There isn’t anything too mean for them to do. Wiley said their ma was the same. Today I
saw Chip Malone, and even
he
hinted that Dory was a loose woman.”

“Some people like to spread a story like that. Coming from a relative they believe it must be true.”

James paused. “What you’re saying is that if the killer is looking for whores, he might come after Dory.”

“It’s a possibility.”

“Hellfire!” James sat down hard on the chair.

“Men talk. It’s reasonable to think that what’s been said about Dory has spread throughout the territory.”

“You don’t believe it?” James stood and looked down at Ben as if he could kill him.

“Hell no! Do you think I would have left my daughter here if I did? If she was in that trade, she would have left here and
gone to where there were more… customers.”

“What can I do? What the hell can I do? I can’t take her and Jeanmarie up to the cutting camp.” James sat back down and leaned
his forearms on his thighs, his hands dangling between. “I never realized they hated her so much because nothing like that
was ever said around me. They’re seldom here when I am,” he said as if talking to himself. “We’re not like other families
that gather at Thanksgiving and Christmas.”

“I ain’t much good on my feet as ya know, but I can handle that ol shotgun a mine.” Wiley’s sharp old eyes went from one man
to the other. “Done it a few times, too, when some polecat come a smellin’ ’round. Did it the other day when that no-good
Sid Hanes come a callin’. If he’d a made a move to push in the door, I’d a nailed him to the wall with a double round from
ol Bertha.” The old man’s whiskered face had taken on a wolflike expression.

James turned to Wiley. “I’ve not… Dory’s not said anything about men coming here to the house thinking that she… that she—”

“Dory ain’t wantin’ to trouble ya none, boy.”

“I’m sure as heck glad I didn’t know about the shotgun the night I arrived in that snowstorm,” Ben said, and his lips quirked
at the corners.

“I had my eye on ya. Ya’d a not made it to the porch if ya ain’t a had the little missy with ya, and that’s a fact if there
ever was one.”

“Dory’s kept all this from me,” James said as if he were bewildered. “Why didn’t she tell me?”

“She didn’t want you to end up in the woods with a bullet in your back,” Ben said bluntly.

James was staring at the floor, deep in his own thoughts.

Wiley cut off a chaw of tobacco with his pocketknife, stuck it inside his jaw and watched Ben carry his coffee cup to the
stove, refill it and return to his chair.

“Hellfire!” James jerked his head up. “We’ll sell out to Louis and Milo. I’ll take Dory and Jeanmarie and go to California.”

“You’ll what? James, what are you talking about?” Dory stood in the doorway with Odette’s tray in her hands. She carried it
to the counter and went straight to her brother. Her hand gripped his shoulder. “James, did you say what I thought you said?
You’d sell out to Milo and Louis?”

He tugged on her hand and she sat down in the chair beside him.

“Sis, wouldn’t you like to leave here? Go to California or Washington? If we sold out to Milo and Louis we could go anywhere
we want to go.”

“What brought this on? They don’t have the money to buy us out. There’s just enough cash money to run the company until fall.
Steven explained that. The surplus went to buy the donkey engine and the cable to go with it.”

“We could sell on contract and have them pay us so much each year.”

“James, they wouldn’t pay us a dime after we left here and you know it.”

“Steven would see to it,” James argued.

“They would pay Steven his two years’ wages and get rid of him before they’d pay us. Why are you so all-of-a-sudden set on
selling?”

“I want to get you and Jeanmarie away from here,” he blurted angrily. “I’m responsible for you.”

“There’s something you’re not telling me and I want to know what it is.” Dory looked only at James. With fingers on his cheek
she turned his face so that she could see his eyes. “What’s happened, James? Why are you wanting to get me and Jeanmarie away
from here?”

James leaned toward his sister and took her hands in his.

“Sis, there’s been four women murdered near here since Christmas. Three that we know of. There could be more. It’s reasonable
to believe that if there is a madman on the loose, he’ll not stop until he’s caught. I want you away from here until then.”

“That’s terrible… those poor women.”

“McHenry wrote the territorial governor asking him to send a federal marshal. We both know that don’t mean diddly-squat. Finding
the man here in the timber country will be like finding a needle in a haystack. When word gets out, everyone will be looking
for him, and he may leave the country. But we can’t count on it.”

“I understand your concern and love you for it. But Wiley is here, and Ben and Odette… for a while. Don’t worry, Brother.
We’ll be all right.”

James got up from the chair and went to the water bucket. He drank from the dipper and let it fall back in the pail.

“Have you thought more about going to see Mrs. Malone?” he asked when he turned.

Dory glanced at Ben, then at Wiley before she answered. “No. I haven’t had time to think about it. You want me to go, don’t
you?”

“I’m thinking it would be the decent thing to do,” he said tiredly.

“I’ll think about it, James.”

Dory held her breath for fear he would ask Ben to go with them to the Malones. She would die of embarrassment if he refused.
To her relief he let the subject drop.