The Gazebo. Kimberly Cates

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ and the Springfield marching along behind. She tried to concentrate on a mental list of all the things she intended to accomplish before day’s end, but her gaze kept lingering on his wet hair, glistening like coal under the early morning sun. Even in chains the man was arrogant. The way he moved—the way he held his head. Those wet clothes…

      He’s just another mule, Carrie, no more, no less! Five stumps. Think about those, not about the way he looked standing there in his bare skin.

      And she tried, she really did. All the way back from the creek she focused her mind on the task ahead. At the rate of five stumps a day, the field would soon be cleared, and once the stumps were gone, her hand would be healed, and she could hitch up the plow and turn under the brush, allowing the roots and grubs to die over the winter months.

      Think about that, Carrie, not about—

      But oh, my mercy, he was so pretty to look at. It wasn’t the first time she had seen a man’s body. She had seen her uncle once when she’d barged into the kitchen while he was in the tub. At least she’d seen his knees, his bald head and his bony shoulders.

      And Darther, she thought with a shudder, who was pale as whey, with rolls of flab, with his little bitty thing hanging down like a dead worm.

      She shifted the rifle to a more comfortable position, wishing she could trade it for something smaller, and tried not to think about male bodies, naked or clothed.

      Back at the barn, she gestured to the mule, and then to the harness she had devised for pulling stumps from the ground. Her prisoner nodded, made a few minor adjustments, and then hitched up the mule. Sorry, the miserable traitor, didn’t once attempt to kick or bite, and Sorry purely hated being hitched up to anything.

      At least he did when it was Carrie doing the hitching.

      Damn-blasted mule. Damn-blasted sneaky Indian.

      She glared at her prisoner, and because she was later than usual getting started—or because she hadn’t taken time to eat her usual breakfast of black coffee and cold biscuits, her mind began to wander once more.

      Behave yourself, Carrie! He’s a prisoner, a thief and probably worse. You need him because with only one good hand, there’s no way you’re going to get that field cleared, so don’t even think about his—about the way—about his thing!

      Pointing to the lane that led off behind the cabin to the cut-over field, she gestured for him and the mule to go first. Without a word spoken, the blasted mule picked up and walked, sweet as pie, trailing the makeshift harness behind. Carrie kept her gaze focussed on the distant trees and forced herself to concentrate on how to direct a man who didn’t speak English. Didn’t speak anything, so far as she could tell.

      Even if he wasn’t all that bright, he probably understood a few words, a few simple commands. So she took a deep breath and spoke aloud, hoping the sound of her voice could drown out the image of a beautiful naked man standing ankle-deep in her creek. “Best way I know is to dig out under the spreading roots enough to saw through the biggest ones,” she said gruffly. “Once Sorry pulls the thing over, we can saw off the taproot and haul the stump out of the ground. Oh, lordy, you don’t understand a word I’m saying, do you?”

      Shaking her head in frustration, she pointed to the biggest of the five stumps she intended to tackle today. “Dig,” she commanded, and pointed at the spade she had left in the field the last day she’d worked, too weary even to drag her tools back to the barn.

      They were so late getting started that the heat was already miserable, making her think longingly of the cool, clear creek. The one thing she truly liked about summer was that the days were long enough to include a soak in the creek. With no close neighbors, it was safe enough as long as she kept an eye out for snakes. It was a chance to scrub all over without having to haul and heat water, bail out the washtub and then mop up the kitchen floor afterward. A chance to sit and dream for a few peaceful moments—to try to remember the stories she had read when she’d gone to the missionary school. She did like reading stories. Over those early years she’d been well schooled, although she’d since forgotten most of what she’d been taught.

      Now even the pleasure of sitting in the creek and trying to remember her favorite stories was ruined. She wouldn’t dare linger knowing her prisoner was nearby, even if he was locked in the barn. From now on, she wouldn’t even be able to go near the place without picturing him standing in the edge of the water, with his smooth, muscular body, his mocking gray eyes, and those dark, mysterious places that made her bones feel weak as tallow.

      And damn-blast it all, her hand ached! Every three days she poured turpentine on it and packed it with sugar again, the way Emma had showed her, but bandaging one hand with the other was difficult. If her prisoner had been an ordinary criminal instead of a savage heathen—if she hadn’t seen him naked—she might even have asked him to help her, but that was out of the question.

      “Git to it,” she snarled, much as she would have addressed Sorry.

      By the time the sun had passed overhead she intended to have three of the five stumps out of the ground. Using gestures and a few simple words, she explained how they would go about it, then propped the rifle against a nearby stump within easy reach. While her prisoner sawed through the first of the newly exposed roots, she dug out around the next one. When the roots were all cut through, she cussed Sorry into position, fastened the harness to the stump and whapped him on the behind. “Pay attention,” she said when the mule set his weight against the heavy stump. “This is the way we do it.”

      With the first stump hauled to the edge of the field, they moved on to the next. The mule was powerful, she’d grant the miserable bastard that much. It took a lot of swearing to get him to moving, but once he did, things happened fast. Small roots popped and snapped, earth broke, and one stump after another surrendered.

      Once, in a moment of triumph when a deep taproot gave way, she glanced up and grinned at her prisoner. He looked startled, then embarrassed. And then, of course, she was embarrassed, too, and so she swore at the mule. Snatching up his lead chain, she led her prisoner to the next stump.

      Jonah was used to hard work. Back on the reservation it had been the women who had done most of it, freeing the men to hunt and trap and make war and ponder on the changes that were coming to their world and how best to deal with them. But he’d worked, even then. Mostly with horses. He understood horses far better than he understood men, either red or white. Both as a prisoner and as an ordinary seaman, he had worked, but he’d worked hardest of all after retrieving his money from the bank and buying his own land here in the East.

      Breeding horses was a noble thing. It was not drudgery. His people were convinced that if a man followed the plow, the drudgery would take away his manhood and he would become like an old woman, withered and good for nothing.

      Jonah feared the yellow-haired woman might force him to follow the plow. So far she had not. He did as she directed, but he did no more than that. He could have made things far easier for her, but he did not.

      The second day, she drew another of her lines in the earth, outlining the section she intended to clear of stumps and eventually plant. He told himself that she would have to do most of it without his help, for by the time winter passed and the earth grew warm again, he would have long since cleared his name and returned to his own land.

      Or failed in his attempt and been returned to jail, to be tried or hanged without benefit of judgment. The white man’s justice was not always logical, or even just.

      Sawing through the thick, damp roots, he thought about what he must СКАЧАТЬ