In the Season of the Sun (19 page)

He took the stairs one at a time, measuring his steps, quietly ascending, and when his head cleared the landing, he paused again as the hall above brightened. And he spied Virginia, the upstairs maid, with oil lamp in hand, standing before the door to Nate Harveson's bedroom. The flame in the glass flue burned low; she gave it just enough wick to keep the fire going.

Here in the wood-paneled hall the storm was a muffled presence, yet the fifteen-year-old girl shuddered and stretched a trembling hand toward the door latch. The door swung open, and Virginia removed her dust cap and clutched it in one hand. She held the lamp before her as she stepped inside Harveson's bedroom and closed the door behind her.

Con Vogel quietly climbed to the upper landing, carefully placing his steps as he started down the hall, and when he stood abreast of the master bedroom, he noticed even in the gloom the door was ajar. The girl had failed to close it all the way. Vogel grinned and cautiously approached the bedroom. A faint sliver of lamplight delineated the edge of the door. And it swung back on its hinges at the slightest touch. He opened the door just enough to see the mirror on the wall to his left.

Framed by the gilded borders of that looking glass, two bodies feverishly entwined, dark flesh and starkly white, hands and legs and sweaty naked torsos, fevered kisses and Nate Harveson's hushed moans of pleasure. Vogel caught a glimpse of dusky flesh by candlelight, then heard a muttered curse and Harveson saying, “Damn it, girl, you didn't close the door proper.”

Coverlets rustled. Naked feet padded across the room. Con Vogel was caught off guard and retreated into the hall but not before young Virginia appeared in the door. Her eyes widened with recognition, but she made no move to cover her budding figure. The door slowly, slowly closed at her touch, her eyes locked with the musician's.

The click of the latch startled Vogel from his trancelike state. He continued down the hall only to pause yet again at Abigail's bedroom door. He recognized the bath sounds and heard the woman in the tub softly humming to herself.

Con Vogel thought of Nate Harveson and his servant. Jealousy welled in him and encircled his throat in a merciless grip. For a moment it was a struggle to breathe. Abigail Harveson would be his one day. No one else's, especially not some backwoods oaf like Milam.

He maneuvered uncertainly across the hall to the guest bedroom opposite Abigail's room. The interior of the guest room was illuminated by the flash of distant lightning whose lurid glare lit the balcony window that overlooked the rear grounds of the estate.

Vogel seemed to remember drawing the curtains but could not be certain. He had left a lamp lit. However, the damn thing must have burned out or run low on coal oil. He felt his way to bed. The frame creaked beneath his weight as he sat down on the edge of the big four-poster. The feather mattress was soft and to his liking … if only he had someone to share it with.

He considered relighting the lamp on the end table, then decided to hell with it and kicked off his riding boots and loosening his shirt, stretched out on the bed. Thunder growled from afar. The downpour droned on, hypnotically. He folded his hands behind his head, sighed, and allowed himself to relax.

At that moment he felt the skinning knife against his throat.

“Don't move,” Tom Milam whispered.

It was a pointless warning. The earth could have trembled, split apart, and the mighty Missouri changed its course and overflowed the entire estate. Con Vogel would not have budged. A knife has its own steely kiss when razor edged and flush against the throat. Tom eased closer to the musician until his bream fanned the man's cheeks.

“Hear me now,” Tom began. “There is no field of honor, not here. You call me out, I'll kill you any way I can, anytime and anywhere. The only reason you're alive right now is because you sleep under her roof.”

Vogel swallowed and even so subtle a motion caused the knife to bite into his throat and send a trickle of blood from the glimmering steel down his neck to the pillow.

“Now, we can leave things as they are and the next time I come calling it'll be for keeps, or you can take your damn note back and we'll forget this ever happened. Which will it be, fiddle player?”

Con Vogel stared up into that dark, youthful face above him, and never had he seen so hard and cold an expression. There was death in that stare. In the glare of lightning, Tom's eyes were twin obsidian pools set in high-boned features sculpted of brimstone. “Choose …”

“I take back my letter …” Vogel managed to gasp in a hoarse voice. “And my … challenge.”

Tom nodded but did not ease the pressure, not yet. “Open your mouth.”

Vogel did so. And Tom took the letter from his greatcoat pocket and placed the folded piece of paper between the musician's lips. Vogel obediently clamped his teeth shut.

As quickly, the pressure was gone; the bed creaked as Tom slipped off the mattress and melted into the shadows.

“Don't follow me.” His tone of voice implied the direst of consequences should the German disobey him.

Con Vogel remained like a statue in repose until he heard the bedroom door open and close. Slowly, he brought his hand up and took the piece of paper from his mouth. Gingerly he probed his throat and winced as his fingertips found the hairline cut. The flesh was sticky with congealed blood. It was hardly more than a nick but hurt like hell.

He lay on his back and stared at the ceiling, his cheeks flush with shame. I
ought to follow him, to hunt the bastard down and kill him for this humiliation
. He pictured revenging himself in a dozen different ways, each image more gruesome than the one before. He toyed with the notion with satisfaction but did not stir from bed.

Abigail glanced up in surprise as Tom Milam walked into her bedroom. His boots left muddy prints on the throw rug. That was the least of her worries as she leaned out from the tub and caught a towel from a nearby chair and held it to her bosom, covering what she could of herself.

Tom grinned at the look of utter amazement on Abigail's face. He walked to the small black iron stove that Abigail used to warm her room as well as to heat water. Tom lifted the heavy iron kettle from atop the stove and carried it to her tub.

“I thought you might need a little extra hot water.”

“What are you doing here?” Abigail managed to say. She still couldn't believe her eyes.

“I figured to help with your bath.” Tom nonchalantly poured the contents of the kettle into the tub, being careful to keep the spout angled down at the foot of the tub.

“Precious little reason to ride out from town in a driving rainstorm.”

“Your comfort was reason enough.”

“I need but to raise my voice and my brother will see you horsewhipped and thrown out into the night.”

“And yet you speak softly. You do not call for help.”

“I don't need help,” Abigail pointedly replied.

“Are you sure?” Tom moved with leonine grace along the side of the tub and knelt until his lips were a whisper away from the young woman's mouth. He leaned forward and kissed her cheek, her neck. She tilted her face and his lips found hers.

His arms slid beneath her and when he stood, Tom lifted her in his arms. Water streamed from her nubile form and splashed back into the tub.

Tom turned toward the bed.

“Wait. We can't. My brother …”

“He's probably asleep.” Tom continued on to her bed and lowered her onto the blanket and quilt.

“But I'm all wet,” Abigail protested in a hushed tone.

“So am I.” Tom yanked the towel aside. He lowered his lips to her breasts, his tongue flirted with each taut pink crown.

“No.” This time the urgency in her voice made him stop. He sat back, puzzled—surprised by her tone and the fact that he had obeyed. He was used to having his way with the fairer sex. A “no” had never stopped him before.

“You feel the same as me,” he confidently observed. “You want the same.”

“Yes,” Abigail said, but she pulled the quilt across her bare legs. “But not here. Not now.” She trembled as her own passion slowly subsided.

“When?”

“I'll tell you,” Abigail said. And she reached up and touched the scar on his cheek. “You'll be the first to know.” There was a hint of amusement in her upturned lips. “When I'm free of this place, this house. And the weight of the past.” She sat up and kissed him. “Come to me in the wilderness, where we can be as wild as the river and free as the clouds. Come to me then, Tom Milam.”

“And in the meantime?”

“Be my friend,” Abigail replied. “Please.”

Tom studied Abigail for a long silent moment, then seemed to look through her. And in that trancelike state he glimpsed a gentleness within his own shadowy soul he thought had ceased to exist. It was a vulnerability too dangerous to afford. He could have crushed it, buried it forever, and let the demons of dark deeds have their day. All he had to do was …

Abigail's hand touched his and brought him back.

“Very well,” Tom said. It was like watching himself from a distance, seeing and hearing someone he no longer knew. Touching her. Being with her. “For now a friend.”

PART V

Jacob Sun Gift's Story

20

J
acob Sun Gift bellowed as the icy waters of the spring splashed across his shoulders.

“Saaa-vaaa-hey!”
he shouted. “That's cold.” He immersed himself in the frigid runoff that spilled over a granite ledge and formed a bitter cold curtain of water.

Jacob wore only a loincloth, and the showering spring washed down the length of his long-limbed, sun-burnished torso. With his blond hair well past shoulder length, he resembled more some wild Norseman until he emerged from the spring and, after drying in the Chinook wind, donned his buckskin leggings and beaded shirt. Once again he was Jacob Sun Gift of the Medicine Lake Blackfeet.

After more than a week of waiting out an early blast of winter—freezing temperatures, sleet, and snow—it was a relief to refresh himself in the spring. While Jacob bathed, Lone Walker built a cookfire and placed a couple of grouse on a spit over the flames. He grinned, amazed by Jacob's reaction to the cold springwater. Lone Walker's foundling son had never taken to this morning ritual of the Blackfeet. To the prayer singer it was a sacred ritual to begin each day whenever possible by immersing oneself in the flow of living water.

“Ho-hey
, Snow Eater, welcome,” Lone Walker said as the fierce rush of the chinook wind lapped at the campfire, the flames turning to streamers in the gust. “Keep the passes clear for us,” Lone Walker continued, face to the wind. He shifted his gaze to the surrounding peaks and sensed the dismay in his son. In truth, the Blackfoot's own heart was heavy. After the more than three weeks since leaving Medicine Lake, they had not even crossed the trail of the elusive young woman Jacob had seen.

Jacob returned to his father's side, squatted down, and pulled on his moccasins. He folded the white rabbit pelts he used for socks on bitter cold days. Worn with the fur turned in, the pelts kept a man's feet toasty warm. No need for them today with Snow Eater on the loose.

Dressed in his buckskins, he left the campsite for a quick circle of the perimeter and to check the snares he had put out the night before. The sun rose golden in the azure sky. The branches of nearby firs trembled in the breeze. Here in broken shadows of the wooded slope, the ground was patched with snow and Jacob left his tracks in that mantle of white. Where the trees thinned, his footsteps raised little clouds of dust on the hard earth. The temperature had warmed considerably by the time Jacob returned to camp with a pair of fresh-killed rabbits dangling from twin lengths of rawhide.

Jacob held up the fresh meat for his father's inspection and then, squatting down against a log, began to skin and butcher his kill. The work went swiftly and soon he had a pair of soft white pelts drying in the sun and a parfleche of fresh stew meat for the evening meal.

Lone Walker announced the roasting birds were thoroughly cooked and the two men feasted in silence. As the Blackfoot ate, he studied Jacob, trying to read the younger's man mood.

“Maybe we will ride through the Buffalo Horns today,” Lone Walker said, nodding toward the valley and the twin peaks rising to either side like the horns of a buffalo hat.

Jacob shrugged and continued to eat. And the warm breath of the chinook fanned the embers of the campfire.

“What is it, my son?”

Jacob looked up from his meal, wiped a forearm across his mouth, and frowned, searching for the right words. “A wind blows through my soul.” He tossed a leg bone into the flames. “I do not think we will find her, Father. We have already ridden up into the gap before the snows. We found nothing. Not even the remains of a campsite.” He glanced down at the charred leg bone as if it were to blame.

“We will find her,” Lone Walker replied. He wiped the grease from his hands in the dirt, stood, and walked from the fire upslope, climbing hand over foot until he had skylined himself above the cave and campsite. Like a statue then, rock still on the crest of the ridge, he remained with his arms outstretched to the azure sky. The wind buffeted him. The buckskin fringe of his leggings and shirt fluttered like streamers, like tongues of fire, for each strand was tipped with red war paint.

Lone Walker began his song.

“All-Father,

Hear this one who walks the sacred path.

Lend us your eye,

My son and me,

That we may see

That we may find the end

Of our trail.

All-Father,

Hear me.

Ride with us, Grandfather.

Be our sight beyond sight.

Bring us to the end of the trail.”

Jacob sat by the fire and watched his father and felt a yearning in his heart to believe the older man's actions would be of any use. It was difficult for him to trust in magic. Growing to manhood among the Blackfeet, he had watched the shamans work their magic. Sometimes such men were successful, sometimes not. Jacob had always attributed any favorable outcome to coincidence. Not that he held to the fundamentalist beliefs of his birth parents. Their God had failed them, allowed them to be massacred. He had no use for any of the mysteries. He trusted his powers with rifle and bow. He trusted the stride of a good horse. These were things a man could count on.