The Bride Wore Spurs (The Inconvenient Bride Series, Book 1) (32 page)

As if in answer to her prayers, toward the end of the month she and Hawke awoke one morning to a beautiful dawn with miles and miles of clear blue skies overhead. Hardly able to believe her eyes or contain her excitement, Lacey leapt out of bed into the frigid air of the room, ran to the window for a better look, and stood there shivering in her cotton nightgown.

"Oh, Hawke," she cried, surveying the carpet of sparkling white snow covering the valley. "Come look. 'Tis a gorgeous day outside, almost like summer."

He joined her, but had enough sense to don his buckskin shirt before striding up behind her and wrapping her in his warm embrace. "You're shaking like the quakies in a high wind."

"Q-quakies? W-what are they?"

He pointed to the trees which by now looked more like tall brown weeds amongst the dark green pines. "Those aspens out there are sometimes called quaking aspens."

She shrugged. "I don't care if I shiver till my hair falls out, just look at that sun. I think I shall go stand under it and spend the entire day there just warming myself." She slumped against her husband's chest. "Thank the Lord this miserable wintertime is over. I do not think I could have lasted much longer."

"I hate to bust your bubble, sweetheart," he said, pushing her hair aside in order to nuzzle the back of her neck. "But spring is still a good three or four months off. This is just a small break."

She turned in his arms, facing him now. "Then why are we inside? We must go enjoy the sun while it lasts." Then another exciting thought occurred to her. "Oh! And can we please go down to see Kate and Caleb? She can not be but two months away from having her wee one."

"I wish we could, sweetheart," Hawke pulled Lacey back into his arms, far more interested in her than in a fleeting patch of sunshine. "I'm afraid the roads are impassable down the way, and even if we could get through, I can't take the chance of us getting caught down at Three Elk. The days are short now, remember? At best, you're looking at only five or six hours of that sunlight."

"Then let us go now."

He shook his head, hating to disappoint her. "No, Irish. We can't. The weather is nice now, but within a half an hour, another blizzard could hit."

Discouraged, she leaned into him, resting her head against his chest, and for a minute, Hawke thought he wouldn't have any problem convincing her to go back to bed. Then at once, she broke out of his embrace.

"If that is the way things must be, then I'll not be wasting one more precious minute of sunlight. If you're wanting your breakfast cooked today, you'd better get to it yourself, sir. I'm taking myself and the new rocking chair you and Crowfoot made me for Christmas, and setting us both down in the sun. There is where we'll be staying till there's no more sun to be had."

Convinced now that Lacey wouldn't be coming back to bed with him, Hawke stretched as he glanced out the window and said, "In that case, I guess I'd better round up Crowfoot so we can take a ride out to the north pasture to check on the shelters to make sure they're still standing. While we're up there we might even scare up some fresh meat for supper. This looks like a fine day for rabbit hunting."

"Oh? Why do you say that?"

"The rabbits around here are a little like you, Irish. They just can't resist sitting outside and sunning themselves on a day like this." He pinched her freckled cheek. "We'll be back before dark."

* * *

Before he left, Hawke cleared the snow from a nice patch of ground in front of the house and deposited Lacey's rocking chair smack in the middle of it. She sat there a good long time, basking in the warmth of the sun and enjoying the incredible view of the valley and snow-capped mountains beyond. Then later in the day—actually, toward evening by winter's hours—the winds suddenly came up, bringing with them the return of the bone-chilling cold. Lacey shivered once, a tremor which shook her body from end to end, then pushed out of the chair. Glancing up, she noticed that the skies were not only getting darker, but that they were clouding up again, the heavy dark mass of clouds telling her they were in for another big snowstorm.

Grumbling to herself, she reached over to pick up the chair, when an idea struck her. Maybe she couldn't stay outside, but there was no reason she couldn't bring the out-of-doors into her home. Hurrying to beat the onset of the storm, Lacey ran to the barn, collected a small saw, then dashed into the thick stand of lodgepole pines at the back of the ranch. After cutting several aromatic boughs from the trees, she gathered them into her arms and started for the house.

Lacey was out of the tree line but still several yards from the back porch when the first snowflakes fell, one of them landing directly on the tip of her nose. She impulsively stuck her tongue out in an attempt to reach it, but of course she could not. Laughing at her own folly, she started down the path she'd made earlier for the return trip to the ranch.

That's when she heard it.

A low, beastly growl that raised the hairs on the back of her neck. Lacey froze, her gaze darting from side to side. She could see nothing which might have made the sound. She took another, more cautious step toward her home.

Again came the growl, this time in a higher pitch, more of a vicious snarl. Staring directly at the house, her eyes wide, she finally saw the vague outline of a dog standing in the shadows on the top step of the porch. Lacey's blood ran cold, then ceased to move at all. The animal skulked out of the shadows and down the stairs where it stopped. It wasn't a dog, but a
wolf
.

She took a step backward, realizing the beast had blocked her way to both the house and the barn. It began to growl even more ferociously then, as if it knew it had her trapped. Then, the long hairs on the nape of its neck standing erect and mane-like, the wolf slowly crept toward her.

Already terrorized by the animal's snarls and menacing yellow eyes, when the beast curled its upper lip, revealing razor-sharp canines, a wave of dizziness swept through her. Fighting off a swoon as the animal bunched its body preparing to launch an all-out attack, Lacey screamed and threw the pine boughs she'd gathered toward its head.

Then, still screaming, she turned and ran back toward the forest. She ran and ran, occasionally stumbling over a fallen branch or large rock, but ran until she was nearly winded. When she realized she was also running out of steam, Lacey glanced over her shoulder to check the distance between herself and the wolf. As she skittered blindly through the trees this way, arms outstretched as guides, the toe of her boot collided with something solid, pitching her into the air.

In the next moment, her world spinning topsy-turvy, Lacey crashed to the ground. Then everything went black.

* * *

At what should have been just before dark, Hawke rode back to the barn alone under very black skies. Crowfoot, as eager for some new scenery as anyone, decided to give Hawke and Lacey a little privacy until the next break in the weather. He split from Hawke after they'd finished checking the shelters, and went on down to Three Elk taking the rabbits they'd shot with him. The boy, still half-animal in some respects, was in no danger from the elements, but another weather break couldn't come too soon as far as Hawke was concerned. It was already snowing so hard, he could barely see the barn even though he was just two feet from it. After rubbing down his horse and tending to the rest of the animals, Hawke started for the house, planning on warming himself along with his sweet little bride the minute he got in the door.

Head bowed against the storm as he walked toward the path leading to the house, Hawke noticed several scattered lumps buried beneath a rapidly thickening blanket of snow. Curious, he kicked at one of the lumps to reveal a small branch that looked as if it had recently been cut from a pine. More than just curious now, as he moved down the path he unearthed a few more branches along with a small saw. Instinct alerting him, he glanced up ahead to the porch.

Something was lying on the top step. And it seemed to be gnawing on something. Slipping his Bowie knife out of its sheath, Hawke brandished it as he cautiously approached the porch. As he drew closer, he was able to identify the beast as a large timber wolf.

The animal turned its big gray head toward the path then, and bared its teeth at him.

Never poor till one goes to Hell.

—An old Irish maxim

Chapter 17

"Oh, it's just you, Hattie." Hawke sheathed his knife, then climbed up to the porch. "And here I thought we'd finally gotten rid of your homely old hide."

Hunkering down beside the she-wolf, he rubbed the animal's big gray head and made a quick perusal of her body. Even though she wore her thickest winter coat by now, Hattie's ribs were readily apparent. "It's been a little tougher winter than you figured on, huh, girl?"

As if in answer, the animal dropped the item she'd been chewing between her front legs, then rested her muzzle against the toe of Hawke's boot. He laughed at the gesture, remembering the less-than-friendly greeting the animal had given him the first time they met some fours years ago. Hawke had come upon the wolf as she lay dying, her right rear leg firmly clenched in the teeth of an enormous steel trap. While he and Caleb had never employed such vicious instruments during their years of trapping, this was not the first time they'd found live quarry snarling and writhing in one of the hideous traps.

Knowing after one quick glance at the animal's shattered hind leg how badly she'd already suffered, Hawke's first impulse had been to put the wolf out of her misery. That and take the hide, even though he and Caleb didn't normally trade in wolf pelts. But as those wary, yellow eyes glared at him from across the clearing, showing him an unusual vulnerability and something he couldn't quite name, that soft spot inside Hawke took over instead, and he found himself trying to save the animal.

After rapping the wolf between the eyes with a thick pine branch, stunning her, Hawke tied her still-dangerous jaws shut with the thong from his own hair. Working quickly, he freed the animal, then amputated her mangled leg and stitched up the stump. Unknown to Hawke at the time, Crowfoot had been hiding in the thick foliage not four yards away, watching and afraid. Once the wolf was out of danger and lay hobbled by Hawke's fire, the boy slowly crept into view.

Unaware at first that the young man had been running with the she-wolf, her cub in all but the most basic of ways, Hawke welcomed the boy into his safekeeping, assuming that his family would come along looking for him sooner or later. Hawke laughed again as he remembered how Caleb had come upon him sitting in the middle of a snow bank with a wild Indian boy on one side and a three-legged wolf on the other. The senior trapper had accused him of going soft in the head, yet before the week was out, the older man was falling all over himself trying to win both the boy and the animal.

Crowfoot by comparison had been easy for Caleb to conquer; old Hattie, named after a woman Caleb had almost married, apparently had room for only one man and one boy in her wild heart. To this day, she still had a little trouble being nice to the older trapper, and even tried to run him to ground on occasion. Which prompted thoughts of someone else—
Lacey
.

"Oh, Lordy." Hawke jumped to his feet, talking to the wolf. "If you're figuring on sticking around a while, I'd best go warn my wife about you. And you'll treat her right, or you go, no arguments. Got it?"

Hattie cocked her grizzled head, then whined.

"All right, you can have a little chow first, but then you'll have to behave, or it's back to the woods with you." Hawke opened the icebox and removed a good-sized chunk of beef. As he tossed it to the animal, he noticed the item she'd been chewing on; one of Lacey's shoes. Not overly concerned since boots were about all his wife wore now, Hawke stepped into the house.

"Lacey?" Not only silence, but ominous darkness. He hurried inside, growing more and more alarmed as he realized she hadn't lit even one lamp. Then Hawke noticed her new rocking chair was not back in front of the fireplace. "Lacey?" he called again, the volume louder, harsher. Still nothing. A quick check out front confirmed his fears. Lacey had left her new chair out in the storm, but there was no sign of her. She wouldn't have abandoned the rocker she professed to love so much unless she had no other choice.

Gripped with cold fear, Hawke raced through the house and out to the back porch again. He'd been thinking of going to check the barn, even though she hadn't been there ten minutes ago when he tended the animals. Then he remembered the pine boughs littering the pathway. Retracing his steps, which was more difficult now as the increasing snow had begun to fill them in, he cut up toward the still-visible path which led into the forest. They were faint, not much more than small dimples in the snow, but the prints he found there had been made by a small pair of boots. And not too long ago, either.