Dance Hall Road Read online

  Ike shifted, her hind hooves just missing Buck’s toes, her tail giving him a swat across the face. Buck growled and dug his elbow into Ike’s sassy butt while he adjusted the burden in his arms. “You black-hearted mule, for that, you sorry excuse for an equine, I should let you stand here all night with no feed or water.”

  Ike tossed her head up and down, then pawed the ground. “Well, you should be sorry; you’re not the one who has to take responsibility. You can go off to the barn and stuff yourself with hay and fall asleep without a care in the world, leaving me to play nursie-nurse.”

  With snow coming down hard and fast, he entered the house, dark and cold as a crypt. With the front door open, a cone of gray light shown across the room, disclosing the crude bar constructed of a rough-hewn timber laid across two empty wooden kegs, and a dusty piano in the far corner.

  Headed for the stairwell, Buck gracefully navigated between two keg tables and four mismatched chairs. Cold and hungry, he passed his private living quarters, concealed behind a woolen army blanket, and grumbled a complaint. “Sure would like to go to my room and warm myself before my big, beautiful, nickel-plated, cookstove. But no, I got to get this corpse upstairs.”

  He growled, and spoke aloud to the unresponsive woman in his arms. “Even if you’re breathin’ now, you probably won’t live to see another day. A lot of trouble is what you are. I’ll bet you’re gonna be more trouble than the rattler that thought to make a home in my hat yesterday.”

  He’d planned on, had even looked forward to, coming home and cooking himself some hearty soup and corn bread. Besides being hungry as a bear, he wanted to get at the books and magazines he’d packed home with him.

  Buck’s library made him proud. He had two large bookcases full to overflowing with novels, law books, medical books on dentistry, diseases, bones, anatomy, curatives, chemistry, lots of cookbooks and gardening books, and a twelve volume set of encyclopedias.

  Yep, already the woman had become a gal-dang nuisance.

  He reminded himself to tell her he didn’t allow anyone, male or female, beyond the curtain—no one. He knew the place looked stark, with not a lick of paint or varnish on anything outside or inside. He liked it that way, plain and simple, functional, to the point of being unwelcoming. He didn’t want the yahoos who patronized his establishment to get too comfortable. They were to come, do their business, then get the hell out. If this woman didn’t die, and if she should come to her senses, he hoped she’d find his home entirely inhospitable and move on as soon as possible.

  All the way down the canyon she’d stayed limp against his chest. He hadn’t heard so much as a squeak from her or the babe. Hell, Buck didn’t know if they were alive or dead. What he’d seen of the woman’s face on the trail hadn’t left a favorable impression. Skinny, the woman all legs and arms, hoisting her up into the saddle hadn’t taken any effort at all. Her features were sharp, her cheeks and eyes sunken, her skin ashen. Hell, she looked like death warmed over.

  As he carried her up the stairs and into one of the bedrooms, he figured he’d end up burying her and her baby, if not in the morning, then before the week’s end. Once again cursing the-powers-that-be for irresponsible fools with a sadistic sense of humor, he pulled a blanket over the woman, her baby still in her arms, then left them to take care of his animals, figuring he’d done his part. What happened next, he would leave up to the woman and whatever merciful deity she could call upon.

  The hot spring supplied him with hot water for bathing, and before retiring, Buck put a couple of buckets of warm water on the upstairs landing, along with a cup of tea, a slab of hardtack and some cold beans the woman could put in her belly if she had the strength and the will. If alive…a big if…then she could damn well come and get it—he wasn’t about to start waiting on her.

  In his room, washing up, he heard the floorboards above his head give out a squawk. The rooms upstairs were dark as pitch without a lantern. He listened, half-expecting to hear a thud signaling she’d fallen. Her footfalls were soft and barely discernible, but he thought he heard the bed springs once she made it back to her room, and he took in a relieved breath.

  The next morning he fixed himself a big breakfast of flapjacks, fatback and some fried apples, and of course good strong coffee. He made enough for the woman, and set the plate of grub and a cup of coffee at the top of the stairs. Again, he heard her come out of her room, then retreat.

  Afterward, whatever he put on the stairs disappeared: food, water, soap, one of his old, tattered flannel shirts, a pair of threadbare long johns, a swatch of old leather he’d found out in his barn, one rabbit pelt with holes in it, some strap, some old buttons, a needle and thread, cotton cord, all kinds of odds and ends. It became a game to set something on the stairs, then return to find it gone. He had no idea what she did with all the stuff…no idea at all. He thought he should be grateful she’d stayed out of his way for two whole days, obviously feeling well enough to take care of herself.

  The baby cried, of course, but it never cried for longer than a minute or two. He heard the woman’s soft footfalls on the floor above him as she moved around, but never really got a good look at her. He’d catch a glimpse of her now and then when she rushed out to the privy. It seemed to him she deliberately waited until he went out of the house before she came down the stairs. He never heard her voice, she didn’t sing—nothing. He likened the situation to living with a ghost, and it gave him the willies.

  On the third day, seated in his room thumbing through his new Sears and Roebuck catalog, he heard her coming down the stairs. He wanted to get a look at her, find out who in the hell she was, and where she’d come from. All his intent left him, however, once he saw her.

  She had on his threadbare, blue flannel shirt, tied at her narrow waist with some of the leather strap. She’d taken one of his good blankets, pilfered from the beds, and fashioned herself a skirt. She came down the steps still wearing his socks. She’d tied a leather thong, crisscrossed up her slender ankles and around her calves, to keep them from slipping down and flopping at the toe.

  Her clothes hung on her thin frame, true enough, but she had bosoms. He guessed they provided milk for the kid. She’d fashioned the tanned rabbit hide into a sling, tied with some of the strapping over one shoulder and under her other arm, which completely concealed the baby. Her hair, an interesting shade of black, looked clean and shiny, reminding him of the color of his coffee. She had it pulled back into a braid that went clear down her back to her waist. Wispy feathers of hair curled at her temples and at the nape of her long slender neck.

  Her full lips and high cheeks held a bit of color today, and her blue eyes snapped with an intelligence he found unsettling. Even skinny, he thought her beautiful. The way she held herself, spine straight, head up, haughty as a queen, the way she moved, all elegant and graceful even in his cast-off clothes—danged if she didn’t throw him off his pins.

  She looked right at him, too, but didn’t say a word as she passed in front of him, going outside to the cistern with a bundle of soiled diapers under her arm, diapers which she had no doubt made out of the sheets off the beds. Getting a good look at her up close, Buck took a guess and decided she wasn’t a girl, but wasn’t old either, might be twenty or so.

  The four inches or so of snow they’d gotten two days ago had dried up and blown away, and today a sharp cold breeze coming down the draw brought clear skies with it. Buck stood in the doorway for a minute or two watching her, debating with himself if he should or shouldn’t ask her where she’d come from or where she belonged. Maybe she’d been headed for Chief Joseph territory. He thought he detected in her demeanor, her sharp features, a hint of Indian blood. He could take her over to the Snake River country or into Baker City, get her out of his way before the real snow started. It’d be a damn bother, but he reckoned it wouldn’t cut into his alone time too much.

  Deliberating, he asked himself, did he really need to know anything about her? Maybe not knowing would be b
etter—remain detached and unaffected. He decided to wait a day or two. If she was on her way to somewhere, sooner or later she’d leave on her own, and that would be fine with him. For now, he would let it slide.

  Besides, he had plans this morning. He wanted to get down to the spring. He’d heard a flock of geese fly over in the early morning hours. This time of year, the geese and ducks liked to drop in at the hot springs, paddle around, pickin’ off the frogs and bugs before moving on south for the winter.

  He had a freshly killed elk hanging in the barn, bleeding out, and he needed to attend to it. He’d intended to get it cut up into chunks to cure and jerk.

  »»•««

  After sitting down by the spring among the reeds, cattails and willows for almost three hours, shivering in the cold, he looked forward to some of his strong black coffee. With a couple of nice big ganders in his poke, he headed straight for the barn to pluck and gut the birds before hanging them in the smokehouse.

  He didn’t see the woman anywhere when he left the barn for the house, but she’d draped her damned laundry over the rails on his front porch. When he opened the door, the smell of fresh apple pie hit him in the face.

  How dare she enter my room? Use my pots, my pans, my bowls, flour, sugar…

  “Woman!” he bellowed, plowing through the curtain. “Get away from my stove. Damn it all to hell.”

  It didn’t help to know it was his own damn fault. He hadn’t warned her, but she should’ve known better.

  Women, they did like to invade a place with their smell, their touch.

  Well, by God, not my place.

  She stood there with her back to him, unmoved. Calmly, she removed two golden brown pies from the oven and set them carefully on top of the warming oven above the stove. She then picked up a ladle to stir whatever she had cooking in his favorite, big, cast-iron kettle, at the back of the stove.

  None of the whores, no woman or man, had ever been in his room. He didn’t allow it. Any woman who disobeyed his orders, Buck automatically kicked out, no mercy shown.

  Sure, he made use of the whores. Not a monk, he went upstairs for that. Ask anybody…everybody knew if you valued your life, you stayed the hell out of Buck’s room.

  He marched across the room in three strides and jerked her around to face him. With her dark brows furrowed over those deep blue eyes of hers, she tilted her head to the side, looking perplexed, and…of all things…innocent. “What the hell do you think you’re doin’? Did I say you could come in here? Did I say you could use the stove…my stove? I do the cookin’. I don’t need a woman to cook for me.”

  Of all the gall, she had the audacity to shake her head at him, offering him a spoonful of some kind of stew to sample.

  Elk. Elk stew. Damned if she hadn’t gone and cut into the fresh kill in the barn.

  Friggin’ females.

  Batting away the spoon, thereby sending the contents to the wall behind the stove, he yelled, “Damn it lady, get out of my room—now. Get away from my stove.”

  Shaking her head, she offered him the ladle and turned her back on him. Mad as fire, Buck beat the stove with the ladle.

  The bitch didn’t flinch. She simply moved the pot of stew off the heat, reached up to the warming oven, and removed a pan full of biscuits. When she surreptitiously glanced his way, he smacked the stove again, but she didn’t even blink. He started to beat the stove and the pot lid with the wooden ladle, but she pretended she didn’t hear a thing.

  He sucked in his breath, held it, and then closed his eyes before slowly releasing the angry wind from him lungs.

  “You can’t hear,” he said aloud, his shoulders sagging with the realization his words had fallen on deaf ears. He heard the baby’s cry coming from the rooms upstairs. With his mouth hanging open like a big-mouth bass, he watched the woman dish up the stew onto a plate, one for him, one for her. She put two of the most beautiful biscuits he’d ever seen right next to his stew. Damn, the smell of it had him salivating. Her cheeks flushed, her eyes averted and head down, she balanced her plate of food in one hand and one of the pies in the other, then scurried away, going upstairs.

  Chapter Three

  Over the next three days, the woman became an elusive shadow, Buck catching a glimpse of her now and then, but only fleetingly and not face to face. The morning after she’d invaded his private room, he’d found someone had refilled the kindling bucket next to his cookstove. After he’d returned from killing a deer yesterday, someone had split firewood and brought it into the house; that’s when he began to question her motives.

  Apparently he’d put a scare into her, enough to keep her out of his way, but not enough to keep her away from his cookstove. If she thought by doing a couple of piddly chores she’d get around him, well, she had another think coming. Out of principle, even though she shared everything she cooked, he couldn’t help resenting her intrusion into his private domain.

  It irked him that her cooking tasted better than his. He’d forgotten what a woman’s cooking could taste like. Her stew, just the thought of it, made his mouth water. She’d done something, added something—a spice, an herb, or something. Whatever she’d done, he didn’t know how to do it. Bless her, she made fresh biscuits every day. They were light as a feather, tender and golden brown. Her apple pie tasted like no apple pie he’d ever had before. She’d found some walnuts and raisins in his larder and added those to the filling, and the crust…flakey, so light it barely held together.

  The smell of her clean laundry wafted into every corner of the house like smoke. He imagined her and the kid’s laundry drying, draped all over the upstairs rooms. He did prefer a clean woman, but this one washed something every day.

  Daily he reminded himself he didn’t need a woman to cook for him. Hell, he didn’t want a woman to cook for him. He liked living alone. He liked his own damn cooking. He hated the smell of wet, clean laundry, and he wanted to live in his house by himself.

  Working himself into a lather, he complained to the fates about the squalling, puking, pooping brat living under his roof. The woman kept the kid quiet most of the time, which irritated him, knowing his complaint lacked substance.

  He’d caught a glimpse of the little fella whenever the woman made a dash for the outhouse. Her skittering around, avoiding him, sneaking in and out of his house, had Buck grinding his back molars, because he really did want to get a good look at the baby. Much to his surprise, he even wanted to touch it and hold it, and that disturbed and disgusted him.

  This morning, going out to the barn like usual, he vowed to take action. He only had to wait a few minutes before she made a run for the outhouse. Not giving himself time to think about it, he dashed back to the house, headed for the stairwell, taking the steps three at a time. He stood in the doorway to her room, looking around. She’d pulled one of the bureau drawers out and had it on the bed, fixed up with a pillow and a blanket to create a makeshift crib for the kid. She’d moved the bed closer to the window, and on the bed he found several of his books.

  Damn the woman to hell!

  Cursing, he moved to the bed and touched his beloved books. She had two medical books. One lay open to the section on conditions of the inner ear. The other medical book lay open, the pages dog-eared to mark the section on infant care. He hated people who dog-eared the corners of a good book. It ruined the book.

  She’d ruined his book.

  He had to smile though. A romance novel lay on the floor beside the bed, and next to it a book on ancient history, another on Greek myths, and another on navigating by the stars. Pissed off she’d absconded with his books, impressed by her choices, he found himself more intrigued than angry.

  Here, all this time, he’d thought her some dumb, ignorant piece of trash. Now he really had to know, and know right now, today, who she was. Where she’d come from, and what the hell had happened to her that she’d ended up wandering around out in the back-end of nowhere, pregnant, half-dressed, half-starved. The problem, how in the heck cou
ld a fella have a conversation with someone who couldn’t hear? For all he knew, maybe she couldn’t talk either.

  Hearing the door open downstairs, and feeling the wash of cold air as it swept up the stairwell, Buck experienced a few seconds of overwhelming guilt for skulking around in her room, then reset the chalk-line on his conscience. This woman had intruded—she had invaded his private quarters and absconded with his private property—damn it.

  »»•««

  When Petra came up the stairs, the giant waited. That’s how she thought of him. The hairy beast filled her doorway with his breadth, his ominous presence. And by the steely, predatory glint in his silver eyes he wasn’t pleased. If he meant to send her packing, then Petra could accept that. But she worried about her son, about Gabriel. The time had come to find out if the man had brought her here to recuperate or to keep her as his prisoner.

  With her gaze locked to her jailor’s scowl, Petra stumbled on the landing, her arms instinctively tightening around the baby strapped to her bosom. The giant stepped forward, his arms lashing around her waist like steel bands. His embrace prevented her from falling, while crushing her into his solid body and panic overrode reason.

  He smelled of wood smoke and coffee. His beard brushed against her hair. A rush of cool air filled her mouth and, in her head, Petra screamed, No. Please, no. Don’t, don’t touch me!

  With one arm crossed in front of her to guard Gabriel, she slapped the man’s big arms to little avail. He jerked away, a surprised look on his face. With his hands up, he shook his head back and forth in denial. His eyes conveyed the unspoken promise of good behavior as a lock of his busy auburn mane fell across one heavy brow.