Merline Lovelace Read Online Free PDF Page B

Arapahos. We got some Miami settled in Ohio, and once a band of thievin’ Shawnee broke into our smokehouse in the middle of the night. Pa and my brothers and me run ’em off. I heard about the Arapaho, though.” His face twisted in mingled disgust and curiosity. “Don’t they cut up their enemies and carry bits and pieces of ’em in their medicine bags?”
    “They carry whatever their visions tell them they should.”
    Long experience had taught Suzanne that few whites shared either her insights or her sentiments regarding Bright Water’s people. She decided not to attempt an explanation of the complex coming-of-age ritual that included seven days of fastingand prayer before a warrior determined what would go into his medicine bag. Instead, she steered the conversation into less controversial channels.
    “What did your pa think of you leaving the farm to go prospecting?”
    “He wasn’t too happy ’bout it. My mam ’bout cried up a storm, too. I’m the last of her brood,” he confessed. “All the rest, they claimed their forty acres and settled down close to home.”
    “But not you.”
    “Not me. I skinned enough hogs and planted enough corn to see me through the rest of my years.”
    Hunkering down on the bench opposite Suzanne, he reached for one of the stalks. His big hands stripped the leaves with easy, swift pulls.
    “I aim to make my fortune in the gold fields up around Deadwood,” he confided, “then head for San Francisco. I hear a man with a poke of gold in his pocket can see some real fancy sights in San Francisco.”
    Suzanne bit her lip. Her real father had been a riverboat gambler. The handsome, dashing Philip Bonneaux had lost at the gaming tables what little remained of her mother’s inheritance after the War Between the States. He’d planned to recoup the family fortunes in the gold fields of Montana Territory, but, like so many lured West by the promise of riches, he’d died penniless. Suzanne had lovedthe irrepressible, irresponsible gambler with all her childish heart and still regretted losing him.
    “Not everyone strikes it rich in the gold fields,” she warned her young friend gently.
    “Maybe not.” A stubborn look settled around his mouth. “But a man’s gotta find his own way…no matter what some bit of gingham and sass might say.”
    “What’s her name?” Suzanne asked with a smile. “This bit of gingham and sass?”
    “Rebecca. Becky.”
    “And Becky didn’t want you to leave Ohio?”
    “Ha! Not so’s I could tell! She said the hoity-toity ladies of San Francisco was welcome to me…if they had a hankerin’ for overgrown jackasses with empty pockets and an even emptier brainbox.”
    “She sounds like a plainspoken woman.”
    “When she’s got her wind up, she sounds more like a cat with her tail caught in the barn door.”
    Thoroughly disgruntled, he reached for another stalk and twirled it between his big hands.
    “She didn’t used to be so bad. I can’t count all the nights we went down to the river to gig frogs together. She knew just how to whack my pa’s ole mule between the eyes, too, when he got ornery and started tryin’ to take a bite out of us. Then she went and put up her braids and there’s been no talkin’ any sense to her.”
    “When a girl puts up her braids, she doesn’t always want to hear sensible kinds of things.”
    “Becky sure doesn’t.”
    Glumly, Matt stared at the shredded leaf in his hand for a moment or two before lifting his gaze to Suzanne.
    “She’s a lot like you, Miss Bonneaux. Bigger, maybe, and a bit broader across the…” He made a gesture with the leaf. “The, er…”
    “The front?”
    “And back,” he agreed sheepishly. “But, like you, she’s not afraid to look a man in the eye.”
    He hesitated, uncomfortable with the personal turn of the conversation but clearly wanting advice.
    “If you don’t mind me askin’, what kinds of things do you want to hear from a man who comes courtin’?”
    Her