Lynna Banning Page 12

  Ben blew out a lazy breath. “Food’s coming.”

  She was too tired to muster a smile. “I can hardly wait. It smells heavenly!”

  The sheriff sent her an unfathomable look.

  “Will it be soon, do you think? I’m so hungry I could—”

  “Soon enough.”

  Jessamyn flicked a glance at him. For some reason his face was as impassive as his voice, and she suppressed a groan of frustration. The man was impossible to comprehend. Not even the prospect of supper improved his disposition.

  Or was something amiss? She studied the sheriff’s tanned, angular face, the smoky blue eyes that avoided meeting hers. The slow, deliberate way he folded and refolded the bandanna he’d worn at his neck all day told her his mind was elsewhere.

  “What’s wrong?” she blurted. She caught her breath at the look that crossed his face. He knew something—something he wasn’t telling her. Was it about her father?

  “Tell me,” she demanded.

  Ben dragged the fingers of one hand through his dark hair and blew out a long breath. Recrossing his long legs, he met Jessamyn’s gaze. “These people are poor,” he began, his voice low and careful. “Most of the time they’re close to starving. And they’re proud.’

  “They’re the ones stealing the ranchers’ cattle?”

  Ben shook his head.

  “Then why are you telling me this?” Hunger hardened her tone. Exasperated, she hunched her body forward, trying to divine the odd expression in the sheriffs eyes. “You found out something, didn’t you? Was it about my father? About who—”

  “Jessamyn, shut up a minute. I’m trying to tell you something—”

  “About who shot him?” she interrupted. “Well, tell me, then! Who did?”

  Ben’s eyes hardened. “I told you before, I don’t know yet. That’s not what—”

  “Well, why don’t you know?” she snapped. “You’ve had time to—”

  She stopped short at the glint of fury in his gaze. His eyes blazed into hers for a split second, then instantly shuttered.

  Before she could continue, the tipi flap parted and a slim brown arm thrust two steaming tin plates through the opening. Supper! Her stomach gurgled in anticipation.

  Ben spoke some words in the strange language, and a soft reply came from outside the tent. After a slight hesitation, he handed one of the plates to her.

  Jessamyn sniffed the aromatic dish of meat, still smoking from the fire. Gingerly she picked up a strip with her fingers, blew on it and popped it into her mouth. It tasted delicious—rich and slightly sweet. She gobbled another morsel and felt her spirits begin to lift. She might be sweaty and so tired she could sleep for a week, her thighs raw from the saddle, her skin and hair gritty with trail dust, but at least she was no longer hungry! God in His infinite mercy had taken pity on her stomach.

  “This is delicious! What kind of meat is it?”

  Ben chewed slowly, keeping his gaze on her. After a moment the movement of his jaw stopped, and he swallowed.

  “Like I said, Jessamyn, Black Eagle’s people are proud. They don’t have much, but they honor their guests with the best they can provide.”

  Jessamyn ate another mouthful. “Yes, it’s quite good. But what is it?”

  The sheriff kept his gaze on his plate. “Don’t talk, Jess. Just eat.”

  “But I want to know! Any good newspaper reporter would want to know.”

  Ben set his plate down. “You know, with very little effort, you could turn out to be the most wearying woman a man ever had the misfortune to travel with. Now, keep your mind on your supper and thank the Lord you’re not shoveling in what Jeremiah used to call Klamath custard—fresh deer’s blood mixed with ground acorns.”

  Jessamyn made a face. “How disgusting. But this…” She held up a sliver of juicy meat. “This is wonderful. I just want to know what—”

  “No, you don’t” Her head came up. “Of course I do! Don’t tell me what I want or don’t want as if I were a child. Just tell me what this is!” She jammed the tidbit into her mouth and glared at him while she chewed it up. “I might want to ask Cora to cook some.”

  Ben picked up his plate. “It’s an Indian specialty.”

  “So I gather,” she retorted. “I insist you tell me what Indian specialty.”

  Ben sighed. After a long pause, he told her what she wanted to know. “Roasted dog meat.”

  Jessamyn gasped. “Dog meat! You—you mean like that precious little spotted…”

  At once she knew what he’d been trying to avoid telling her.. To honor her presence, and that of Ben, whom the Indians called Iron Hand, these starving people had killed the only live animal they had left in camp—the friendly little puppy she had held on her lap not two hours ago.

  She clapped her hand over her mouth. The tin plate slid off her lap as she began to rock her body back and forth. She was going to be sick. She squeezed her eyelids tight shut and concentrated on controlling the convulsions rising from her belly.

  In an instant Ben was beside her. “Jessamyn, you damn little fool, I didn’t want to tell you. I tried not to, but you just wouldn’t let it alone.”

  Jessamyn turned her face away, afraid she would vomit. Why, why had she been so set on digging the information out of him? She wouldn’t have been able to eat one bite if he’d told her sooner. She knew she had to eat to keep up her strength, but now she couldn’t bear the thought. Hungry as she was, she’d rather starve. Oh, the poor little…

  She could not finish the thought. Choking back sobs, she clenched her fists in her lap and concentrated on keeping her lips clamped shut.

  Ben’s large warm hands grasped her shoulders. “Jessamyn.” He pulled her around to face him. “It’s all right. I’m just sorry you had to find out like this.”

  “It’s not all right!” she said, her voice shaking. “Nothing’s all right.”

  “What I mean is,” Ben began, looking into her face, “you don’t have to eat any more. It would be an insult to Black Eagle to send the plate back untouched, but—Oh, hell, I’ll eat the rest.”

  Jessamyn groaned. After all she’d been through, the pain and humiliation of learning to ride in front of a corralful of entertainment-hungry rowdies, jouncing in the hard leather saddle for the past two days, eating nothing but dry biscuits and unchewable jerky all day long—this was the last straw. Turning her head into his chest, she let the tears come.

  She knew she’d failed. She was too city-bred to ever adjust to the raw kind of life people lived out here in the West. She wasn’t as tough as she needed to be to carry on in Papa’s footsteps. She wanted desperately to succeed so he would have been proud of her, so she could build a life for herself in this wild, untamed land he had loved. But she wasn’t made of iron bolts and whang leather. She was made of flesh and blood. And she was tired and hungry and she hurt all over, even inside. She’d never make it through another day.

  Ben sat very still, holding her trembling body as she cried the hurt out of herself. After a very long time she quieted, but still he held her, his chin pressed against the top of her head.

  When she could breathe normally, she spoke in a dull, tired voice. “I’m sorry, Ben. It wasn’t your fault”

  His heart flopped crazily and then stood still. “Jess, I’ve got some hardtack and jerky in my saddlebag.”

  “No, thanks.” She gave a little hiccup that ended in a sob. “I’m not hungry anymore. I may never be hungry again.”

  Ben said nothing. He lifted his head, and his gut wrenched at the sight of her sun-parched, tear-streaked face. She’d been through a lot in the past two days. No woman he’d ever known could have managed what Jessamyn had.

  And, he acknowledged with a niggling apprehension, no woman he’d ever known made his mouth go dry just from her scent. Even now, after two days on the trail, her hair smelled sweet as fresh clover.

  He gazed around the tipi, wondering how she’d smell after a night on those bearskins. The question burned
deep in his brain.

  Goddammit all to hell, why had he told Black Eagle Jessamyn was his woman? Now the chief had put the two of them together in the same tipi, sharing the same pallet.

  The thought of the old chief brought Ben up short. Black Eagle was no fool. Soon the council would assemble in the big tipi. Ben would smoke the pipe with his old friend and trade stories until the night was half gone, and then…

  He glanced down at Jessamyn, still curled in his arms, her long lashes a dark fringe against her skin. Oh, God. With any luck she’d be asleep when he returned.

  But if she isn’t? a voice queried. Well, then, he’d roll himself into a blanket on the pine boughs and try not to think about her. Try not to listen to her gentle breathing and the little moans she made when she changed position during the night.

  He’d try, but he knew he would fail. Jessamyn Whittaker was something he had never encountered before—a spunky fighting spirit caught in a woman’s soft body. She was infuriating and admirable all at the same time. Worst of all, he was beginning to like being around her.

  Dammit, he didn’t want to like her! And he sure as hell didn’t want to need her.

  But, God help him, he did.

  Chapter Ten

  Ben stepped into the circle of light cast from the fire pit in the center of the Indian camp. Using the Yurok tongue, one of the three Klamath tribe languages Ben knew well enough to speak, he sought permission to join Black Eagle and his few braves sitting cross-legged around the licking flames. The chief motioned him to join them, indicating the place of honor at his left.

  “Hi ye.” Ben thanked the old man, then folded his long legs beneath him and seated himself in the circle.

  “Many months have passed since you visit us,” Black Eagle observed. “Now that I have set my eyes upon Iron Hand’s woman, I begin to understand.” The chief’s black eyes danced.

  Iron Hand’s woman. Ben almost choked. If Black Eagle only knew what a handful Jessamyn had turned out to be. His gut twisted. He wouldn’t think about her just now. Later, when no offense would be taken by eating other than the Indian meat offered in their honor, he’d get her some jerky from his saddlebag. Damn little fool—she’d cost him more than one night’s sleep already, and the journey was only half over.

  Black Eagle produced a long-stemmed pipe carved out of yew. Deliberately he packed the soapstone bowl with kinnikinnik from the pouch at his waist, then slowly raised it to salute the sky, the earth and the four quadrants before lighting it with a twisted wisp of dry grass.

  “Your woman—” the chief paused to suck air through the stem “—weeps. It is good that you train her with a strong hand, old friend. Then, between the hour that the dove calls to its young and the moon rises, she will be sweet tempered.”

  Ben grunted. “That is not our way, Black Eagle.”

  Black Eagle drew on the glowing pipe bowl, exhaling with satisfaction. “If a man does not lay his hand on his woman, she grows uncooperative, like an unbroken pony. You must beat her often.” He passed the pipe to Ben.

  “I did not come to talk of women, Black Eagle.” Ben clamped his teeth down on the pipe stem and inhaled the rich pipe mixture, puffing the heavy smoke out his nose in the Yurok fashion. The sharp scent of the pungent Indian tobacco made his eyes water.

  Black Eagle’s lined face wrinkled into a grin. “Men talk always of women.” He swept his gaze over the small circle of braves gathered about the fire. “Especially when they are scarce, as they are now. Only my daughter, Walks Dancing, and my own woman, Dawn Star, and four others—one very old—have escaped the reservation.”

  “You are fortunate, old friend. Many on the reservation die of smallpox.”

  Black Eagle inclined his head in a brief nod. “I am fortunate indeed. Each night my woman brings comfort to my tipi. Soon perhaps I will have a son to follow me.”

  A son! Ben kept his face unchanged. Black Eagle must be nearly sixty, and he was still capable… He wrenched his thoughts from the picture that rose in his mind. He himself was not yet forty, but he felt incapable of such a feat. Fathering a child was something a man did when he was whole, inside and out. Ben hadn’t felt whole since the war. Since Lorena.

  “My woman is young,” Black Eagle said as if reading Ben’s thoughts. “Yours, also. Perhaps you will get a son on her before this night is over.” The chief’s eyes twinkled.

  Ben jerked as if touched with a hot iron. To cover his discomfort at the direction the conversation was taking, he puffed on the pipe and passed it to his left. A young black-haired man with a gray foxtail around his neck accepted it with a grunt.

  Black Eagle was playing cat and mouse with him. Despite the fact that the chief had sent for him, the canny old man always enjoyed a verbal skirmish before getting down to business. Ben needed to turn the talk to the matter of concern.

  “If women are scarce, your braves do not need many horses to offer for them,” Ben observed, keeping his tone noncommittal.

  Black Eagle snorted. “Braves always need many horses, even if they do not take wives. Besides, there are other things a man can offer for a woman.”

  “Cattle?” Ben held his breath.

  Black Eagle shot him a quizzical look. “Cows are valued only for meat. We have very few of these.”

  “How many, my friend?” Ben asked the question softly in English.

  The chief also spoke in English. “Why do you ask?”

  Ben watched the pipe travel from one brave’s hand to the next, and chose his next words with care.

  “My brother and others in the valley below do not understand how the Indian can claim to be hungry.”

  The chief’s eyes hardened into two black stones. “Your brother and the others are not hunted like dogs and imprisoned behind the white man’s walls.”

  “This is true.” Ben lapsed into the Yurok tongue. “My brother and my friend offer food to the Indian. Two fat beeves each rising of the new moon. Would you have more?”

  The old chief nodded. “One more. In the winter, maybe two. We are a proud people. We do not like to beg.”

  Ben hesitated, then said in English, “Neither would you take what is not yours without payment.”

  Black Eagle stared at him. “Someone is stealing your cattle?”

  Holding the old man’s gaze, Ben nodded.

  Black Eagle uttered an oath. Suddenly he shouted a guttural query at the braves gathered around the fire.

  Blank looks passed among the assembled warriors. One, a tall man with gray-streaked dark hair, scowled and replied to the question in a querulous tone. “Why does Iron Hand ask this? Does he believe we are without honor?”

  Black Eagle turned steady eyes on Ben. “Why, Ben?” he said in English.

  “A man has been killed,” Ben replied softly. “This man spoke of stolen cattle. He was shot.”

  “How many have been taken?” Black Eagle asked in English.

  “Twenty, sometimes thirty head at a time. Been going on about a year now.”

  “Twenty cows would fill our bellies for seasons to come. Yet the bellies of our children are far from full.”

  Ben eyed the old man. “This is true, my friend. In my heart I have known it is not the Indian who raids our herds. But in the minds of others…”

  Something flickered in the chiefs black eyes. “My people are already hated by the white man. What would you have me do?”

  “Why did you want to see me?” Ben countered. The two questions were connected, he was sure of it. Black Eagle knew something that put his ragged band of renegades in even greater danger than they now suffered. He wanted Ben’s counsel, but he knew the chief would not reveal a thing unless it was absolutely necessary.

  Inside, Ben had to chuckle. Black Eagle was as wily and cautious as any general, Confederate or Yankee, he’d ever known. And proud. His task now was either to outsmart the old man or gain his complete confidence.

  Black Eagle gave him a penetrating look, then turned away to accept the pipe, whi
ch had now made a complete circle around the campfire. He drew on it, exhaled and handed it, stem pointing to the left, to Ben. The chief gestured for Ben to keep it.

  It was a rare honor. Usually the chief retained the privilege of emptying the ashes and retiring the pipe for the night. Black Eagle’s action spoke volumes.

  Tomorrow Ben would speak privately with the chief. Tonight he would plan how to approach the slippery old fox. Tonight he’d—

  Black Eagle rose and clapped Ben’s shoulder with one sinewy hand. “Sleep well, my friend.” His eyes shone in the firelight. “I wish you much joy in your woman.”

  Ben started. Joy in his woman? He ran his hand absently over his chin. Never again would he know joy in a woman. It was too easy to have his heart cut out with one brutal slash. He had long since come to a truth about himself. Lorena’s betrayal, her callous rejection of him after the war, had maimed his spirit, undermined his belief in the goodness of life and his place in it. It had eroded his value as a man. If he ever opened himself to such hurt again, he knew he would never recover.

  But a battle raged within him. He was hungry for the sight of Jessamyn’s mossy green eyes and that stubborn little chin, aching to breathe in the fresh, sweet scent of her hair. He wanted to be near her, hear her voice.

  He dreaded the coming night hours stretching before him. What in the hell was he going to do with himself with her not two feet away? He couldn’t sleep with the horses— Black Eagle would surely know, and tomorrow the wily old chief would use that as another clever ploy to pull Ben off the track.

  He gritted his teeth. Escape was not an option. Neither was avoidance of the tipi where he knew Jessamyn waited. He was trapped.

  Ben moved toward the tipi like a man in a nightmare, caught between two primal forces warring within himself— desire and self-preservation.