Felicia Andrews Page 25

  "This is me," he said, taking hold of her wrists. ''This is me, and I think it's about time you done some listenin' for a change. You ain't always right, y'know, Amanda. Far from it. You listened to me, you woulda been with Doug right now, only you got tangled with that fool from-"

  "Stop it!" She tried to wrest free of his grip, but his anger had taken him too far. He yanked her closer, so unexpectedly that she stumbled against him.

  "You stay away from here awhile, Amanda," he warned her. "I got lots to think about, and I don't need you harpin' on me like this every day. You just stay away and leave me alone. "

  His eyes searched hers frantically, and she thought for a moment she could see a tear in each corner. Before she could be sure, however, the eyes hardened again, driving determination through a brief, but unmistakable, wall of fear.

  "Stay away!" he hissed and flung her hands down.

  "But-"

  He brushed past her, and she reached out a hand to stop him. It froze. There, standing less than ten feet away, was Olivia. Harley did not look at her; he only marched back to the house and slammed the door behind him. Wind, meanwhile, had done with his frolicking and had come up behind her, nuzzling her back and pushing her forward. Blindly she reached out behind her and took hold of his bridle.

  Olivia was wearing a plain cotton dress stained with food from bodice to waist. There was dust on the long sleeves, and smudges across her forehead. Her hair was in its customary bun, but too many wisps had escaped the netting, and she looked as though she had been running through brambles.

  And it was not until then that Amanda realized the truth of something Hope had told her several months back: that Harley had been forced to rid the house of its help, and Olivia was doing all the cooking, the cleaning, and probably much of the repairing by herself. She had to. Harley was too busy working on the range and in the fields. And that so-called munificent salary he was getting was not nearly as large as he had led others to believe--especially when all the profits were still flowing into Wilder's purse.

  Damn the man, she thought.

  "Amanda, I believe Harley has asked you to leave our ranch. "

  Amanda almost turned to go, changed her mind and instead leaped onto Wind's back and brought him as close as she could to Olivia without frightening her away.

  "Livy," she said, a hand trembling to reach for her, "I just want to help. I don't think Harley-"

  Olivia gestured violently, as though slapping the hand away. "I saw the way you wanted to help," she said acidly. "I saw you holdin' him . "

  "What?"

  Olivia's lips tightened until they almost vanished, and her eyes narrowed as though she were working a curse. "I saw.I'm not blind. You can't fool me, you . . . you whore!"

  "Olivia!"

  Wind shied suddenly, and Olivia backed away, her hands at her cheeks.

  "You tryin' to run me down now?"

  "For God's sake!"

  "Well, you can't have him . " She leaned forward as if ready to spit. "You can do all you want, witch, but you can't have him! He's mine, and nothin' you can say is goin' to change that. Do you hear me, witch? Damn it, do you hear me?"

  "Olivia, you're not-"

  "You're damned right I'm not," Olivia said, pulling herself straight and. clasping her hands tightly in front of her. 'Tm on to you, Amanda Munroe. You want this ranch for your own. I know that. I hear the talk. I know what they're sa yin'. "

  Amanda could not speak. Confusion, dismay, and fear were unable to sort themselves into a coherent sentence she could use to try to mollify the woman. Instead, after a single pleading look, she sawed at Wind's reins and turned him around.

  "And if you come back here, I'II have Harley shoot you!" Olivia shouted after her. "Just see if I don't!"

  Amanda did not race that palomino home. Her eyes were too filled with tears of her own that had to be shed, and if she arrived with red and swollen eyes, she would either have to lie, or tell the truth-neither of which she had the strength to do. Wind seemed to sense her distress; his frolicking ended, and he moved as smoothly as he could over the ground, every so often shaking his finely sculpted head and snorting, as though he were commenting on the perversity of humans.

  Just what I need, she thought and had almost settled herself into a bath of self-pity when Wind suddenly stopped, nearly pitching her over his head. Her hand automatically moved in a slapping gesture alongside his neck, but he persisted on remaining still, his ears pricked high and his nostrils distended.

  Amanda frowned and looked carefully around her. She was in a field of sea-thick grass and islands of intense color, the far side of which was a dark wall of green that marked the band of woodland that lay between her spread and Wilder's. And against that wall was a blotch of color. She strained, lifting herself slightly until her eyes were able to separate the lines of the blur into a tall, magnificently antlered elk, its sable collar glistening, its proud and raised head turning slowly as it tested the wind.

  The palomino snorted again and pawed at the ground.

  The elk snapped its gaze around, and Amanda froze, watching, until the justly named emperor of the forest strode majestically back into the foliage and was gone.

  She remembered, then, an afternoon so many years before when she and Doug, side by side on the banks of a low stream, had watched a stag and his family breech that same forest wall. They had not touched until the tableau was over, then had kissed as if it were the most natural thing in the world to do at the moment-a seal that bound the memory, a seal that froze time.

  She wept tears, not of sorrow for times past, nor of that same self-pity she had been battling against since Carl had been wounded. They fell in salted veils over her cheeks from the confusion that had once again stalked through her mind.

  Why, she wondered, was it so difficult simply to live? Though she was certainly not a saint by any definition of the word, neither did she believe herself so eternally damned that she should be visited by such plagues.

  It all came together, then, as though time had erased most of its hours and she was left with only those moments that had sought to cause her anguish: the Wilcox tragedy, Doug, Trevor, Carl's being ambushed, Webber killed by a prostitute, the cattle, and now Harley. She held up her head and glared defiantly at the May sky, her eyes blinking rapidly as the tears continued to fall in silence. She did not sob. She did not gulp for air. She only sat on Wind's back and let herself feel the purging that had been so long in coming.

  And as Wind started once more to carry her home, she realized what feeling had been born of the confusion, and realized further that it was not confusion at all-it was fear.

  Fear that the world had suddenly lost the rules by which she had known it.

  Fear that she was no longer in touch with those elements of the universe with which she could converse and from which came her supernatural reputation.

  And the feeling . . . was isolation.

  TWENTY-TWO

  A week passed, and another.

  Amanda walked through the daylight hours as if she were sleeping. She greeted, she nodded, she laughed . . . and felt nothing. She noted with a mute stare the news that Olivia had been seen in Coreville, telling as many people as she could that Amanda and her husband had been caught more than once in compromising situations. Few people believed her; yet a handful of the older women and a few of the more self-righteous understood that smoke and fire were born of the same tinder.

  She heard a rumor from Bob Booth that Ephraim Wilder was due back in Wyoming before the end of the month. Curiosity, however, was stillborn. She did not care.

  And at night she began to ride. In black from shirt to trousers, hat to boots, she would climb aboard Wind's back and ghost through the forests, the ranges, along the moon-strewn roads as silently as the wind that followed her back. She strained for that communication she felt she had lost, feeling within her an emptiness all the money, all the silver, all the lovers in the world would never be able to fill.

&
nbsp; She stood for hours on the banks of a stream, listening to the water sing lullabies to itself . . . and she heard nothing.

  She startled families of deer, of elk, a bear and her two cubs . . . and could not face them.

  She held out her hand to an owl perched on the gray limb of a lightning-dead tree . . . and it ignored her.

  She spoke to Alex and Sam, the three of them standing in the shelter of the stable while a brief but vivid thunderstorm barreled across the plateau.

  "I don't believe it," Alex told her, though he did not face her.

  "It's true," she said. Her face was haggard, her hair losing its luster. She stood with a slight stoop, and the hand that gripped the open door frame was gaunt and lined.

  "You are troubled," said Sam, his silhouette sharp in the flare of the lightning. "It happens. "

  "It's dead, " she insisted. Her lips quivered, but the smile would not come. "I never really believed it, you know. I just . . . I just accepted it as being a part of me. Harley has a way with men you can't explain, but they do whatever they can for him without complaining. Nate, for all his posturing and pretending to be our king, is shrewd; he can see through the knots of a problem without half trying. You two--"

  "Mother. "

  "--you manage horses as though they were children. They listen to you, and you don't even talk to them . " She felt a grating lump forming in her throat. "You see how I use reins on Wind these days? I never had to before. It's . . . it's . . ."

  She could say nothing more. And the two men held their silence, waiting, each of them in their way grieving for the loss of their mountainwitch.

  Finally, when the storm had passed and the air took the scent of mountain peaks and fresh hay, she walked back into the house and sat by her daughter's bed, holding the sleeping child's hand and rocking, humming to herself, the green of her eyes fading to lifelessness. She bent, once, to kiss the girl's forehead, causing Bess to stir in her sleep. And later, shortly after midnight, she was heartened by a surge of rage that she should be behaving this way, as though she were Bess and a favorite toy had been taken from her as some form of punishment. But the rage did not last. And she felt dead inside.

  "I don't like this," said the man in shadow.

  "I would not worry. Everything is working just fine."

  "I can see . . . something, all right. But I don't know. I just don't know. "

  "This is not like you. I do not see why you worry. There are people-all of them fools with mouths as big as a cave-who are saying things against her. She cannot go to the Circle B any longer because her friends have turned against her. It is as you said. She is too stubborn to talk to that fool Indian and find out the truth. "

  "True. Still . . . "

  "You are getting me angry. "

  ''I'm just being cautious, m 'd ear. Just being cautious. Where Amanda Munroe is concerned, it never pays to underestimate the effect of anything. "

  "I do not understand. "

  "She is an Indian . "

  "So?"

  "She's done many things in her life that no other woman in this country would ever dream of, much less act on. And part of it is because of that instinct of hers. She knows things we can only guess at. "

  "But she does not know this . "

  "How can you be so sure?"

  "Because she is also a woman. And she is not mad enough that she should know this thing. If she got mad, then I would be afraid. She is not mad. It is said she has turned off herself like a dammed stream. She is not mad. She is going crazy. "

  "That's funny. "

  "It was not meant to be. Now. What do I do now? I am getting so bored! I have half a mind to take the money and leave here. Such a town! It is so . . . dead!"

  "You will not take the money. You will do as you're told."

  "I guess so. "

  "Don't be foolish, woman. Your blood can be spilled, too . "

  She rode slowly through the deep green air beneath the heavily crowned trees. Somewhere to her left was the cheerful, almost laughing sound of the falls that turned the mill's great wheel, and underlying it the occasional shout of one of the workers. Birds scolded, squirrels chittered, underbrush rustled as invisible creatures darted out of Wind's way. Soon the trail opened onto a small clearing where sunlight slanted in thin golden beams to highlight the low grass; where a profusion of yellow and white flowers were tucked around the sides where there were gaps in the shade; where the sky in all its piercing high blue was a series of serrated fragments, pieces of a jigsaw looking for its completion.

  She slid from the palomino's back and slapped its rump gently. Wind snorted, tossed his head, and walked to the clearing's far side to find the best, coolest grass to graze on. He was leaner now from all the unaccustomed exercise, and the muscles that rippled along his flanks and chest were impressive in attesting to the speeds he could attain.

  Amanda watched him as she sank slowly to the grass-cushioned ground, shaking her head in mute admiration at his sheer beauty and aura of power. He was, she thought, about the only thing left that she could depend on to remain the same these days. Alex, of course, was changing rapidly as the responsibilities of marriage took their toll of his childhood. And that was perhaps the most disturbing thing of all, since she did not want to lose what she had so fervently loved in him.

  And Four Aces was sinking inexorably into deeper trouble. The extent of the cattle's disease had been drastically underestimated, and those that had been shipped to market had returned far less than she had hoped. Word was, buyers were frightened off. The problem was, who had told them? As such, then, she had been forced to let go nearly a dozen hands, many of them who had been with her for years. She had given them the choice of leaving, or switching to the silver mine or the lumber mills; but they were cattlemen, not lumberjacks or miners, and they could not see how they could change now. The disappointment was great. She had hoped that some residual loyalties would prevent them from going.

  She did not believe that she would lose the ranch-it was far too big and there were still the profits from the silver and the wood-but the thought that she had somehow failed, that she was forced to curtail operations here and there disturbed her greatly. There were too many people dependent upon her for their survival . . . and she was letting them down.

  It was that reason, more than any, that brought her here. This clearing had been a favorite spot of hers since the first year she had arrived in Wyoming. Few others knew about it. None were permitted to use it for their own.

  She came seldom, and only when her troubles were too great even to speak to Sam about, or to Alex. Both men were often laconic to a fault, and now she did not feel like searching for depths of meaning in their conversations. She wanted answers, she wanted them before sunset, and she was going to wait until her mind had grown weary of struggling against her and gave up the solutions.

  If, in fact, there were solutions to be had.

  The idea that she had lost whatever so-called powers she once held was not bothering her. She had decided only the night before that all her rantings against the cruel fists of destiny did her no good at all, that she would have to learn to rely on other facets of her character . . . if they were strong enough to take up the slack. It was foolish anyway, she thought, to believe that she had somehow been special. She was no different than any other woman--or man, for that matter--except that she had once been able to gain insights where others had failed. And this faculty had broken down completely and forever.

  She was alone with herself. And the feeling of isolation became not a foe but a companion that she accepted without welcoming.

  She sat cross-legged, her hands dipping between her thighs to pluck at the grass and shred it, holding it up to the afternoon breeze, and watch the shards twist and curl into the air. She sought patterns, and found none; she sought signs, and none were given to her. And she had blanked her mind so completely against what was around her that she did not hear the footsteps until they were almost upon her. />
  Leaping to her feet, then, she spun around in an angry crouch, her left hand dipping toward her boot where she had slipped a thin, short knife. The hand froze, however, and she straightened slowly.

  Trevor Eagleton was wearing a blinding white shirt and silver-embroidered waistcoat, a turquoise-studded belt, and black trousers coated with a patina of trail dust. He was hatless, and he held out his hands to fend off her aborted defense.

  "You don't seem surprised to see me, " he said softly. He held out his hands to bring her to him, but she backed away, and his arms fell loosely at his sides.

  "I'm not. You have a habit of popping up without telling anyone you're around. "

  He stared at her, and she could sense his puzzlement at her reaction. It was not a pleasant feeling. She could not feel the warmth that he generally cast toward her, and she wondered if it were him, or if she had lost that ability, too.