Soul of a Crow (4 page)

Yet because of me, we were all without Angus.

“It's all right, Lorie-Lorie,” Malcolm soothed as he stood straight. He patted my cheeks and said, “We won't let you go again.”

Boyd echoed this sentiment in his usual gruff fashion, saying, “Damn right.”

I scrubbed away the wetness on my cheeks and then clutched Sawyer's strong forearms, still locked about me.

“Thank you,” I tried to say, but it emerged as a hoarse whisper.

Our horses were grazing to the west, their hides still damp from the earlier violent rainfall; my eyes sought Whistler first, the beautiful red-and-cream calico mare, Sawyer's horse who loved him dearly and was equally loved in return, by both of us. She had tirelessly carried Sawyer over the prairie to me, across the endless miles; I knew if not for Whistler, I would currently be lying in the ground alongside Angus and the grave marker for our child, in a freshly-dug hole and with rocks piled over my body, one of thousands left forever behind on the trails.

You fought back. You wouldn't let Sam kill you without a fight. Sam is dead now. Jack and Dixon are dead
.

A shudder trembled over me before I could quell, with tremendous effort, the thought of those three men sprawled in the camp in which I had been a prisoner, one with his eye punctured out. My fist clenched in a spasm of remembrance, as though I still clutched the stone arrowhead.

“Lorie-Lorie, let's fry up these here eggs,” Malcolm said, neatly collecting them into his palms, drawing me from the dark swamp of my thoughts.

“Let's,” I agreed, glad for the distraction.

We ate around the fire as the sun slowly sank, sitting in our usual places just as we would have at a household table, balancing plates on our knees, disregarding forks. The evening light was splendid as it spilled over us, so windless in the wake of the storm that the leaves of the cottonwoods near our camp remained silent, not whispering with their usual companionable rustle. The stillness created the sense that words spoken miles from our position could perhaps be discerned.

The muted coo of mourning doves, so common to fine evenings, met our ears, along with the warbling trill of a red-winged blackbird; in the distance, a crow rasped its rusty call. The birdsong blended with the ever-present, low-pitched buzz of insects amid the prairie grasses, enormous dragonflies that darted erratically through the air, tiny yellow butterflies whose flight patterns were slow and gentle by contrast; a shiny-green locust a good two inches long startled me as it sprang with heart-stopping suddenness upon the edge of my skirt, much to Malcolm's delight.

“Aw, it ain't but a hopper,” he cajoled, neatly catching the creature and dangling it near my hair.

“But its feet are so sticky,” I said, shying away from the frantically-struggling insect. I had never sounded more like an older sister as I nagged, “Stop that!”

“You two planning to join the boy an' me in town, come morning?” Boyd asked. To Malcolm he added, “Leave off or Sawyer'll strap your hide for tormenting his woman.”

Sawyer laughed at this, while Malcolm immediately fired back, “Lorie's
my
sister.”

“I'd like to see the day either of you could strap Malcolm,” I said, and just as I spoke, the locust wriggled free and fell directly into the gaping collar of the boy's shirt. He yelped and sprang to his feet, springing from bare foot to bare foot in what amounted to a wild jig as he attempted to dislodge it.

He cried indignantly, “It's
sticking
to me!”

I said, with no small amount of satisfaction, “I
told
you.”

- 2 -

Deep in the
night, I woke from a strange dream.

Cold and unsettled, I blinked into absolute darkness; the moon had long since set, our lantern extinguished for the night hours. My hands were clenched into fists, as though poised to do battle, my heart erratic even as all evidence suggested that nothing was amiss, that indeed I lay safely within our tent.

And yet a breath of icy apprehension lingered at my nape.

It was only a dream
, I thought, willing myself to believe this.
You have been through an ordeal. It will take time to recover from the shadow cast in Missouri
.

I became suddenly aware that Sawyer was awake, sitting beside me with his face buried in both hands. My heart jolted and immediately I threaded my arms about his waist, pressing my cheek to his naked back. He grasped my forearms and a shudder trembled through him.

“What is it, what's wrong?” I demanded in a whisper.

He whispered, “I'm sorry to wake you, I didn't intend to.” His voice emerged low, and harsh with emotion, as he explained his distress, “I dreamed I couldn't find you, I was riding hard and couldn't find you.”

I rose to my knees to bring him closer, cradling his head to my breasts. He wrapped both arms around my waist, and I stroked the hair back from his temple, kissing him there. His skin was heated, damp and salty with sweat.

“What if I hadn't gotten there…
you were in such danger
…”

“Sawyer,” I soothed, my heart splitting with concern and tenderness.

His hands moved slowly over my back, fingers spread wide; he nodded and I could tell he was too choked to allow for response.

“Let me get my legs around you,” I insisted, and he shifted to allow this, keeping me near as I resettled upon his lap, my thighs spreading to curve about his hips. I knew he was resolute in his decision that we would be wed before we fully joined, as he wished to follow the proper order of things according to his sensibilities. I knew he worried so about how I was healing, both physically and emotionally, and if I would even welcome any sort of carnal indulgence. Though in this moment, it was not about such things.

“There,” I murmured with quiet satisfaction, holding him tightly.

He curled his fingers into my hair, his cheek against my temple, until he had calmed. I kissed his jaw, letting my lips linger, imbibing the scent of him, until he exhaled a slow breath and softly kissed my shoulder. Taking us back to the bedding, he whispered, “I did not mean to wake you.”

“You did not wake me, love. I dreamed of something that frightened me,” I admitted. “But I cannot exactly recall it.”

“There is an odd sense in the air,” Sawyer whispered. “It seems a night fit for disturbing dreams. But only dreams, nothing more. It is all right, Lorie-love.”

And held securely in his arms, I felt the essence of the nightmare retreating, the tension within me ebbing away. I allowed his words to comfort; within minutes, the sound of his breathing had evened, indicating sleep, and I pressed my face to him, wishing for the countless time that I could as easily will away all such darkness.

Heaven knew I harbored my fair share. It seemed in some ways as though an entire lifetime had come and gone, whispering its fingertips fleetingly over my cheek to acknowledge its passage, in the last three years. I had been subsequently released from both of my old lives—the first, my idyllic childhood in eastern Tennessee, the youngest in a family of five, longing to be a boy so that I would be granted the daily privilege of working with horses alongside my father and two older brothers.

As a little girl I spent countless hours hanging on the corral fence, as attracted to the horses as a divining rod is to groundwater; Daddy indulged me, his only daughter, and from him and my brothers I learned the ways of horses, and to ride, despite the mild shock to my mother's delicate sensibilities. Mama had deigned to allow these less refined elements of my education, but took it upon herself to ensure a thorough tutelage in more sophisticated subject matters.

I often wondered, with considerable writhing of spirit, what my dear, faultlessly proper mother would say if she knew that at times I kept myself sane by reciting Shakespeare in my mind as yet another man rammed his whiskey-tainted tongue into my mouth and squeezed my breasts with hands both rough and unconcerned. How I would study the water-stained ceiling above my loathsome narrow bed at Ginny's place, dim in the lamplight, and upon which the shadows of man after man's frantic rutting atop my body was cast like flickering demons come to mock me as I lay beneath each in turn, clenching my jaws to keep from uttering what would surely become an unending scream.

Even now, though years had elapsed since I beheld the last of my family still living, the wealth of their love remained in my heart as a token held over from the sweetness of that young and innocent existence. The memories of my parents, my brothers, sufficed to sustain me through the horror of what I faced after the War came crawling and blotted out the sun, casting instead a light with a muddy, blood-tinged tone. William Blake, my father, and my brothers, Dalton and Jesse, left to fight for the Confederacy in 1861, never to return to our home in Cumberland County. The boys died in battle at Sharpsburg in 1862, while Daddy survived until 1864. Upon his death, my mother withdrew even more deeply into herself and expired from illness a year later, in the July of 1865.

Left utterly alone at age fifteen, in the war-torn Southern land of my birth, I had no possible opportunity to choose my own destiny; I was eventually sent northwest in a canvas-topped wagon with a family named Foster. In my memory, it remains a rather benign journey, though of course I had no notion then as to what would become of me only months later. The Fosters and I traveled placidly beneath the late-summer sunshine, through the heart of a country now at tentative peace; though by the time the wagon rolled into St. Louis, Missouri, Mrs. Foster had died of a lung ailment, leaving Mr. Foster floundering at what to do with a young girl not his kin. Hardly two days passed before his dilemma was solved: he bet me in a card game and lost, and I was summarily deposited on the doorstep of a clapboard building that housed a bustling, ground-floor saloon and a thriving, second-floor whorehouse, only a few blocks from the overpopulated river district.

My virginity ensured a heavy profit for the owner and operator of the place, a grim-faced and calculating opium addict by the name of Ginny Hossiter, who put me to work the very next night, despite my status as a terrified novice, ignorant to all but the most basic facts concerning physical consummation. Out of the necessity born from the will to survive, I learned quickly the tricks of my new trade, that of disguising my choking fear and subsequent lashing shame, and feigning pleasure for countless male customers, whose sole desire had been to spill their sticky-hot seed between my legs.

If asked now, I would not willingly estimate how many men had thrust their bodies inside mine, night after horrific night during that period, leaving me drained of all desire to live, all sense of true self, by morning's tepid light. In the confines of my room at the whorehouse, the sun had appeared indifferent, weak and insubstantial, a sharp contrast to the way I regarded its light as a girl, as something joyous and beautiful, a benediction upon my shoulders. At Ginny's, where I had been forced to change my name to Lila, I internally retreated to a degree that I believed myself incapable of ever feeling genuine emotion again; I had long speculated that death would come leaping far too early for me, whether through the brutality of a drunken customer or my own desperate hand wielding a knife to lay open a vein on the underside of my wrist.

Stop
, I commanded.
Enough for tonight.

It is done. You will never be Lila again.

Never, Lorie. It is all right.

It is all right…

* * *

Mid-morning found Sawyer and me together on the wagon seat, Boyd and Malcolm mounted on their horses, Fortune and Aces High, respectively, and yards ahead on the trail. Juniper and Admiral worked as a team to pull us along, while Whistler politely kept pace alongside. We left our tents staked out near the fire pit, intending to return by late afternoon.

“We needn't accompany them, if you'd rather wait in camp,” Sawyer reminded me; he knew I had little desire to visit a town. “I'll stay with you. If Boyd rustles up a preacher, he'll ride back here before we can say ‘I do.'”

I reached to tuck a wayward strand of golden hair behind his ear, as it tended to slip free from its moorings throughout the day. He grinned at the gesture and bent to kiss the side of my forehead, angling so that his hat brim did not bump my head. I said softly, “Imagine if the sun set upon us as husband and wife, this very evening.”

“I have in mind a gift for you, and I need a town to have a hope of finding it,” Sawyer said, releasing his grip on the reins with his right hand to catch my left. He held it and used his thumb to gently touch each of my fingers in turn. He said, “I would like very much to place a ring just here,” and so saying, pressed his thumb to my third finger.

Though the sun was already casting us in heated beams, I felt a similar bloom at the idea of wearing a betrothal ring. I admitted, with quiet joy, “I have been letting myself imagine our home. I picture us building it together, and our barn. A large one, for all of our horses.”

Sawyer enfolded my hand within his, saying, “Our home won't be grand in scale—not just yet—but we will live together within it, which is the grandest notion I can conjure.”

“Truly, if we continued to roam the prairie and reside in our tent until the end of time, I would be content,” I said, letting my gaze rove to the northwest, the direction in which we traveled, where the blue edge of the sky blended together with the rippling prairie; from our vantage point on the wagon seat, the horizon appeared as unreachable as stars in the heavens.

“There is a certain satisfaction in being on the trail,” Sawyer acknowledged. When we lay close at night, before sleep claimed us, we often spoke quietly of such things. There was a simple, sensual pleasure in living day by day so close to nature, a sensory absorption of the outdoors; I had discovered that I enjoyed the sense of freedom that daily travel occasioned, of not being bound to a certain plot of land. Sawyer felt the same and believed it meant that we were beginning to heal from the loss of our old lives, those which we had known when we were deeply rooted in Tennessee.

“No matter where we settle, even when we are no longer traveling, I want for us to always watch the sun set,” I said. We had determined that evening was the time of day we collectively favored, when a stillness descended over the land and lifted from the earth rich scents that seemed stifled by the sun. When jewel-beads of dew formed, and the air held its breath, when the western rim of the world was decorated by the warmer tints of its spectrum, scarlet and rose and saffron, by turns. I added, “I have found such solace in the outdoors, and I want us to remember what it meant to travel such a great distance, seeing the country in this fashion. Many years from now, I want to remember these days, here with you.”

“For certain,” Sawyer agreed. “When I soldiered there was such little comfort, but sometimes, on a fair evening, or during a quiet sunrise, I could find a measure of calm. Dreams seem possible again, for the first time in so very long. I admit I fall asleep imagining all of the horses we will breed.”

As though she understood, Whistler nickered.

“You're in agreement, aren't you, sweet girl?” Sawyer asked her, companionably. He spoke to her always with such affection; even the very first night we met, despite the animosity otherwise bristling from him, I noticed his connection with Whistler, their mutual trust.

“Dozens of little paint foals,” I said, delighted by this picture.

“I recall the afternoon Whistler was born as if it was yesterday,” Sawyer said, sounding just like a proud daddy; he had related this story to me many times already, but it remained one I cherished. “I was late for the picnic at the Carters' but I couldn't leave before she was delivered. I went back to the stable before nightfall, as it was, just so I could see her again. She was such a dear little thing, wobbling around.”

I smiled at his tender description, supplying the final detail, “And then you whistled for her, and knew what her name was to be.”

He joked, “You have heard this story before?”

I rested my cheek briefly to his upper arm, whispering, “A time or two,” and then said, “Daddy let me watch whenever our mares foaled, if it was in the daylight hours, even though Mama always disapproved. She considered it far too ‘earthy' a lesson for a girl.”

Sawyer's gaze lifted up and to the left, back into time, as he speculated, “I believe my own mama would have taken a similar position, had Eth and Jere and I been daughters instead of sons. Mama midwifed, after all. She knew firsthand that birthing
is
an indelicate business all around.”

“Well,
our
daughters will be allowed to watch any foaling they choose, with no compunctions from me,” I declared, and Sawyer laughed, shying away when I pinched at his ribs for laughing.

He used his elbow to defend against my fingers, and hastily explained, “I'm in agreement, darlin'. Don't be cross. It's your tone that makes me smile. You sound as though I was about to contradict you. There may be
times
when I contradict you, but not regarding that.”

I relinquished my hope of pinching him and instead poked into his side, pleased when he yelped at my tickling. I said primly, “A true gentleman never contradicts his lady.”

Sawyer winked at me and said wickedly, “Then I ain't a
true
gentleman.”