Deborah Camp Read Online Free PDF Page A

northeast. Where the woods thinned, she found the tracks of their horses. The hoofprints arrowed due north toward the geyser land where the Crow were camped for the winter. Like Pierre Sartain, the Gros Ventre had become scavengers, feeding off others’ scraps and goodwill.
    The fire had died to embers in the hearth and it took her a half hour to manufacture a roaring blaze again to chase away the creeping chill. She dressed the game outside, throwing scraps and entrails off to the side for the dogs. When she entered the cabin again, it was warm and the fire still roared and threw sparks up the chimney.
    Grizzly Gus and another mountain man, Micah McCall, had helped her build her cabin and outbuilding. They had taken pity on her and had done what they could to provide creature comforts. Gus had continued to check on her, but Micah hadn’t been around in months. Gus had heard that Micah had taken up with a cantankerous Sioux widow and had been seen camped near Fort Laramie.
    “He got tired sniffing after you and getting nothing for his trouble,” Gus had told her. “So he took himself that Lakota to warm his buffalo robes at night. Can’t blame him none. He’s young and must vent his manly urges on something ’r other.”
    Running her hands down her body, she rememberedbeing the recipient of such urges and craved no more of the same. It would be wonderful to have a man around to help her with life’s chores and tribulations, but the payment for masculine company was too great.
    Her gaze slid to the lower bunk. The white man lay on his side, his back to her. Firelight scampered over his sandy brown hair. She might be able to make a fair trade with this man, she thought. He was in her debt and she could use that to her advantage. Providing he’s a man of honor, she reminded herself. If he proved to be a scamp with no sense of fairness, then she would send him out into the snow drifts and let him fend for himself again. And if he tried to lay one hand on her, she’d kill him and dig a real grave for his useless carcass.
    Gus had said she’d grown tough and he was partly right. Her years as Stands Tall’s wife also had hardened her, dashed many of her girlish notions and taught her to survive in a world that often ground women under its heel. If for nothing else, she had Stands Tall to thank for her stubborn hold on life. He had given her a reason to live, in spite of all his efforts to do otherwise.
    Her eyelids grew heavy and she curled in front of the fire like a cream-fed cat. Stacking her hands beneath her cheek, she slept and dreamed of those dear to her; Grizzly Gus, Goose Down Woman, Much Smoke, Micah McCall, and the man … the one in her bed with the splinted leg and fevered brow. In sleep, she frowned, perplexed that this man was welcomed by the others in her dream.
    In the bunk, the man stirred and life flooded through his limbs and pumped messages to his brain. His eyelids allowed narrow bands of light to filter through his tangled lashes. The light burned his eyeballs, but he tolerated the discomfort, for it was nothing compared to the gnawing pain in his chest or the shooting bursts of fire attackinghis leg. He moved his tongue, which felt like a flap of dried leather in his spitless mouth. He opened his eyes and stared at irregular logs and dried mortar. Biting down hard on his lips, he flopped onto his back, then lay limply, panting and fighting the onslaught of agony. He tasted blood and was glad because it wet his tongue and made him feel alive again.
    Grains of sand seemed to scrape across his eyes as he surveyed his shelter. He made out another bed above him, felt the heat of a fire along one side of his body, sensed the presence of someone nearby. He turned his head and saw the woman, swathed in volumes of skins and furs, sleeping peacefully. Her hair was as fiery as the blazes in the hearth. The sight of it triggered a vague memory of a woman on horseback against a setting sun, her hair on fire.