Tess stared down into the colt's eyes as it stood inside the corral fence, lifting its little muzzle for her to scratch. It had such pretty brown eyes — liquid brown, the same color as Stone's. Well, not exactly like Stone's. His eyes could change — go from chocolate pools of passion to walnut hardness when he got frustrated at her. A couple times she had even seen a flinty, near blackness of anger in his eyes, and could almost imagine him standing in a dirt street, legs spread and hand itching near his gun.
Probably more than once he had faced off against another gunslinger when he worked as a sheriff. The old westerns she had loved to watch on television had always sent a chill up her spine when they showed the gunfight scene. The deadly glint in each man's eyes — the tenseness in their shoulders — the low-slung holsters, holding pistols that in another second would flash into the men's hands.
Mostly it bothered her, though, that one of the two men on the screen would be dead in a second. No matter that the bad guy had shown over and over again that he was corrupt and beyond redemption — sometimes the scene was so well done that Tess forgot for a moment that it was only a screen death. It always came as a jolt for the man to be so alive and living one second, then nothing but a empty body destined for a cold, dark hole in the ground the next.
How many times had Stone faced something like that? How could the man she knew now — that gentle, caring, loving man — have stood looking into another man's face, knowing that in another second might send a small ball of lead into the man's chest and kill him?
How many times had it come close to being the opposite — the ball ending up in Stone's chest, snuffing out that beautiful, caring spirit of his?
Flower led two horses out of the barn, with Lonesome bounding beside her, and Tess gave a final pat to the colt. It scampered away, kicking up its heels, full of the joy of life. Its little nickers, so different from the more mature neigh when its mother called to it, brought a smile to Tess's face.
"Are you sure you don't want to take the wagon, Tess?" Flower asked. "We'll be riding farther today than we did yesterday and the day before."
Tess shook her head. "I'll be fine, Flower. It's not that I don't think you're perfectly capable of handling the wagon, but I'd really rather ride horseback. And we'll get there faster — have more time to spend at the lake. You've been looking forward to this picnic all week, and we're going to go and have a lazy day of indulgence all to ourselves."
"We've sure got plenty of food," Flower said with a giggle. "Ham sandwiches, cheese, cucumbers, tomatoes, hard boiled eggs, apple pie, angel food cake, sweet cider and elderberry wine. We've even got egg sandwiches for Lonesome."
"That's all part of the day. Today we aren't going to worry about diets or cholesterol. We're going to eat anything and everything we want. And for some reason, that crazy dog likes eggs better than ham."
"What's cholesterol?"
"I'll explain that on the way. Right now, let me get up on this corral fence so I can climb on the horse. Lead her over here, will you, honey?"
Propping her crutches beside her, Tess levered her bottom onto the top corral rail. The gentle mare Flower had brought in from one of the pastures stood quietly while Tess climbed into the saddle and settled herself. When Flower handed her the crutches, Tess tucked them under her left leg and tied them to the saddle with the rawhide thongs normally used only for decoration.
"There. I'm ready, honey," she said to Flower. "But I guess you better go get the rifle."
"I already put it in my scabbard, Tess. Gee, it's too bad you had to split your denims again, after you sewed them up."
Tess glanced down at her leg. It was still a tight fit getting the jeans over the cast, but she'd be darned if she would struggle with those flapping skirts another day.
"They'll sew back up again."
Flower swung onto her horse and reined it over beside Tess. "Well, they sure are a lot more comfortable than riding in a dress. I'm glad you let me wear your extra pair, even if they don't fit me as well as they do you."
"Just don't wear them in front of your father," Tess said with a wink. "He'll banish both of us to your room."
Giggling conspiratorially, they rode out of the ranch yard. Lonesome bounded ahead, already familiar with the route they had taken the last two days. He even ignored the jackrabbit that leaped from a clump of grass as they passed. Stomach still full from breakfast, he had no need to hunt for food these days.
Forever faithful to their assignment, Michael and Angela followed overhead. Angela smiled serenely at Michael as she settled back into the bucket seat of the cloud car Michael had fashioned. It was so nice to have a man take care of the driving for a change. And she had to admit the car was a solution to Michael's seeming inability to master his wings.
It took a little more than an hour to ride to the lake, since they had to go by and check the cattle first. Tess had to admit the ride was worth it. Flower had been right — it was a perfect spot for a picnic.
Huge pines, dogwood and live oak lined the shores, but Flower led her to an opening, where lake waves had washed out a sandy beach. The breeze picked up the coolness of the sparkling blue water, and Tess sighed in contentment as she slid down from the mare.
Not that they needed it on such a hot day, but a picnic just didn't seem right without a fire. After they unsaddled the horses, Tess spread one of the saddle blankets on the beach and sat down to scoop out a depression in the sand, while Flower gathered some wood.
An hour later, they both lay back groaning on their blankets. Tess unsnapped her jeans and slid the zipper down an inch or two.
"I'm so full I think I'm gonna bust," Tess said with a moan. "Whatever made me eat so much?"
"Look," Flower said. "Even Lonesome's full." She held a piece of angel food cake under the dog's nose, but Lonesome shifted his head an inch on Flower's leg and turned away.
Tess laughed at the pup, then propped an arm under her head and gazed at the sky. Soft, white specks of fluff moved lazily across the brilliant blueness, and she watched them for several quiet minutes. Merging then separating, they changed shape almost magically and without notice. One moment she would be eying a fire-breathing dragon — the next a knight on horseback.
For a while, she and Flower amused themselves by pointing out the different figures each saw in the clouds. Flower would point an indolent finger at a cloud she said looked like a fairy-tale princess, with long, flowing hair. Tess saw an ogre, and had Flower giggling as she described the ogre's humped back and gnashing, pointed teeth.
Tess saw a buffalo, and Flower insisted it was a white stallion. They both agreed on one cloud, though, which reminded them of the muscled physique on the book from Tess's pack.
"Tess," Flower finally murmured. "Do you think you'll just disappear some day, the same way you appeared?"
Tess rolled to her side and looked at Flower's worried face. "I don't know, honey," she admitted. "I...well, I just don't know."
"Do you want to go back?"
No! Tess's mind screamed. But she managed to hold her head steady, instead of shaking it in denial.
"I might not have a choice, Flower. Since I don't have any idea how I got here, I can't be sure that I won't just wake up some morning back in New York."
"Do you miss your family back there?"
"Not much," Tess said before she thought. When Flower's face creased in puzzlement, she quickly amended her answer. "My family's not in New York, Flower. There's just my father and two brothers, and they live in West Virginia. They have their own lives there, and we don't have a lot in common any more."
"Your mother's dead, too? How old were you when she died?"
"Ten," Tess said. "I went to live with my grandmother during the summers after Mom died. I'm the youngest — my brothers are lots older than me."
"I was seven when my mother died. I remember her real well," Flower said. "Most of my memories are good, but that last year was pretty awful. I felt sort of guilty after Pa showed up and took us with him, because mine and Rain's lives got so much better. But Grandfather's life is lots better now, too, when we go visit him."
"Would you like to tell me about it, Flower?"
"Uh huh, if you'd like to listen."
Tess nodded silently and listened without interruption while Flower spoke.
What she remembered most about those years, Flower told Tess, was constantly being on the move. Sometimes they would just get settled somewhere and almost the next day, her mother would be tearing down their tipi and loading it on a travois. As soon as she was old enough, Flower realized they were always moving out just ahead of a dreaded Bluecoat patrol that was attempting to overtake her people and kill them.
Her mother tried to make light of each move, make it seem like an adventure instead of the flight for their lives that Flower now knew the moves had been. Even her mother couldn't protect her and Rain from seeing what happened during that last, horrible battle, though, the one that would forever be etched on on Flower's mind.
The terrible cloud of gunsmoke hanging over the tipis when Flower looked back from the top of a hill after her mother grabbed her and Rain and made their escape as the Bluecoats thundered down on the tribe. Her father and the other warriors fighting ferociously against what they had to have known were overwhelming odds. Her father falling, being trampled....
"There weren't very many of us who got away," Flower said. "Somehow Grandfather managed to escape, though, and he found us a couple days later. He was the only man with us all that winter. It was just my mother, Rain and me, and two other women with their babies. Grandfather did the best he could, but we were always cold and hungry. Lots of times I remember my mother saying she really wasn't hungry and giving her food to Rain. He was so little — just five."
Tess reached over and squeezed Flower's hand. How terrible it must have been. As poor as her family had been back in West Virginia, they never went hungry. Neighbors helped each other — shared both food and clothing. And she had never had to worry about someone chasing her, wanting her dead.
Flower turned to Tess with a smile. "Even if I can't really forget that last year," she said, "I mostly try to remember the good times. You knew my mother was white, didn't you?"
"Rain sort of hinted at something like that the first day I met him. He didn't really go into detail, though."
"My father kidnapped her from a wagon train," Flower said with a sigh. "It was so romantic. He said he'd been watching her for days, and he just knew he had to have her for his wife. One night he just snuck into her wagon and took her — picked her up while she was sleeping beside her aunt and carried her back to his camp."
"And your mother just went right along with this?" Tess asked, quirking an eyebrow.
"Not at first," Flower said with a giggle. "She woke up when my father was putting her on his horse and fought him like a wildcat. He showed Rain and me the scars my mother put on his neck and chest one time. He said they were worse scars than he ever got in any battle."
"But she eventually feel in love with him?"
"Uh huh. And Pa was real mad at her when he showed up to rescue her. My mother told Pa that she was married and already carrying me. She said he was welcome to visit any time, but that she was staying with her husband."
"Your pa? Stone? Why was he the one to come after your mother?"
"Oh, Pa was madly in love with my mother, too," Flower explained. "Pa was the leader of the wagon train my mother was travelling on. That was before he started working as a sheriff. He couldn't come after my mother at first, since he had to make sure the wagon train got where it was going safely.
"But he hunted for her after that and rode right into the Indian camp when he found out where she was. My mother said the only reason the warriors didn't shoot Pa on sight was because they admired his bravery for riding right straight into camp. Or she thought that maybe at first they thought Pa was touched in the head, and the Indians never bother a person they think is crazy."
"What...what was your mother's name, Flower?"
"Cherokees never speak the name of the dead, Tess. I can only call them my mother and father."
"Oh."
"You look sort of lot like my mother, you know. She had the same color hair and eyes. I guess that's why I liked you so much when I saw you the first time — you reminded me a little of her."
"Oh," Tess said again, unable to think of another comment.
"What did your mother die of, Tess?" Flower asked.
"Uh...pneumonia," Tess said. "Granny told me that people didn't usually die of that, but Mother had smoked most of her life and damaged her lungs."
"Is pneumonia some kind of disease that gets into your lungs?"
"Yes. Well, I don't know if it's a disease so much as a virus."
"My mother must have died of that, too. She had so much trouble breathing and she was so weak. Grandfather said he tried to drive the evil spirits out of her chest, but they were too strong. She didn't smoke, though. The only ones who smoked in our tribe were the warriors."
"I guess Stone must have come to visit you over the years?" Tess said, her inflection turning the comment into a question.
"Uh huh. And just before my mother died, she begged Grandfather to get word to Pa and ask him to take Rain and me. You should've seen Pa when he came, Tess. He acted like he was scared to death of me and Rain. He told me once that he really was scared, too, scareder than he'd ever been in his life. He said it was one thing to just come visit us, but something different when he looked at us and realized he was going to be responsible for raising us."
Flower shifted to her side and propped her head on her hand, her shining black hair spilling over her shoulder.
"Pa said we looked like a couple ragamuffins. We had dirty faces and bare feet. It took Pa hours to get my hair clean and the tangles out of it, but he said he was bound and be darned he wasn't going to cut it. What I remember most about when Pa came that time was looking up and up at him, 'cause I was still pretty small, too. I wasn't scared, though. I just felt safe and it was a good feeling after the awful winter we'd just been through."
"Stone's done a wonderful job with you kids."
"He's a real good pa," Flower agreed. "I'll never forget my real father, but I love Pa an awful lot."
Me, too, Tess agreed in her mind. But she couldn't help it when the thought continued, asking how much of Stone's love for her was due to her similarity to his old love.
Stone must have loved Flower's mother desperately to risk his life by riding into an Indian camp alone. And he would have been devastated when she told him that she loved another man.
Tess glanced at Flower to see her head pillowed on her arms and her eyes closed. Flower's even breathing told Tess the child was asleep, and she studied Flower's face.
Under a few traces of baby fat yet, the promise of a heartrending beauty came through. Stone would have his hands full beating off suitors when Flower was ready for dating. Tess could only guess how much of Flower's beauty came from her mother.
Grimacing in distaste at the jealousy for a dead woman, which she couldn't quite wipe from her mind, Tess leaned back and closed her eyes. And hadn't that horrid Tillie Peterson said something about Stone and one of the neighbor women? Maybe she had been referring to that Widow Brown.
Well, what the heck did she expect? A wonderful man like Stone should have no trouble finding a woman to share his life with. The strange thing was that he was still unmarried now. If she disappeared from Stone's life, he probably wouldn't have any problem finding a willing female to console him.
Maybe Stone wouldn't need consoling. After all, he'd as much as told her that he wasn't going to let himself fall in love with her. Care for her — yes — but love had to be out of the question — for both of them.
Too late. Darn that mind of hers. It acted like it had a mind of its own!
Tess closed her eyes. An ember popped in the dying fire and a faint whiff of smoke curled around her nose. An infinitesimal niggle of homesickness tugged at her as she recalled the many nights she had spent camping on one of her backpacking trips. After analyzing the feeling for a moment, she realized it wasn't nostalgia for home. Instead, she found herself storing up the memory of this day to brush off later in her mind.
The soft sound of lake waves lapping the shore — the smell of fresh air, mingled with a hint of smoke. She could even smell the grass near her nose and imagined she could hear the trees growing. A twig snapped as though stretching its bark as it enlarged.
Lonesome leaped to his feet, a warning growl in his throat, and Tess's eyes flew open. She stared directly into the corduroy wrinkled face of the man squatting a few feet from Flower.
A scream built in her throat.
***