Proving Herself Page 20

  She pronounced Hereford badly—only two syllables. In the face of her condemnation of lineage, Collier did not correct her. Was he as helpless in her eyes as a well-bred Her-e-ford?

  Certainly he was no rancher. He cared little whether the cattle survived, and even felt ambivalent about the horses. If anybody should survive these storms, it should be the hu­mans—particularly one young, dark-haired, blue-eyed hu­man with a stubborn jaw and ladylike ears. But he imagined the scorn with which Laurel would greet such a thought, so he stayed silent.

  Several days after frozen hell descended, Collier woke to an otherworldly silence and the discovery that they had, in­deed, survived. But Laurel did not manage the time to teach him about feeding and watering the horses before the next blizzard arrived.

  Then the next.

  By then, he'd begun to reconcile himself to the fact that, although he might have careful lineage, his wife—like the longhorns—had the survival skills. Well, it was her ranch.

  And her country. And her world.

  Collier began to wonder why he'd ever thought to fight that.

  Something was wrong with Collier. Laurel noticed it the first morning he didn't bother to shave.

  "Do you mind terribly?" he asked when she commented. "It seems an increasing waste of effort, otherwise. Certainly we've better things to do with the water."

  They melted snow for their water, slow but hardly grueling. Still, Laurel guessed it was a trial to someone who'd grown up having his baths drawn for him. So she shook her head.

  "No. That's fine." It wasn't any of her never mind if he shaved or not. In fact, it gave him an attractive, mountain-man look, and she had to make an extra effort to keep her distance.

  But he looked increasingly less like her Collier.

  By Christmastime, his hair had grown down past his collar, so long that if she reached out, she thought she could draw it into a tiny golden tail. She didn't, of course, tempting though his wavy hair looked; even overly long and catching on scruffy golden whiskers, it was not hers to touch. They had a bargain.

  But it seemed unlike him. He became more inclined to take a drink than he had their first month of marriage, too. He rarely took more than one a day; she didn't worry that he was turning into a drunkard. But the regularity of it unsettled her. She wished they could get into town, so she could ask advice from her mother, or even Uncle Benj. Collier would like a trip to town, she thought. There would be plays and lyceums, musicales... and servants.

  But they were truly snowed in. And all they had was each other, which was clearly not enough.

  The day before Christmas dawned clear and bright. "Come see!" Laurel called, after enjoying the dazzling sunlight for several minutes. Surely it would do Collier's heart good to finally escape the cabin. "It's beautiful out!"

  "I won't see beauty," he noted, "until the lot of it melts."

  He was going to hate two-thirds of the year around here, then. "Well, I'm trying for the creek to make sure any stock that gets this far can find water. I'll take fishing line, too— maybe catch some trout for Christmas dinner. Fresh meat would be good."

  Collier, reading, paused before answering, "Would it?"

  She smeared soot under her eyes, to protect against snow blindness, then grinned at her reflection in the mottled old mirror and added two black stripes across each cheek. "Look, Collier! I'm on the warpath!"

  He cocked his head at her, then frowned—not as if he disapproved, but as if she reminded him of something long ago. Then he shrugged the moment away. "You'll take your rifle?"

  "I always take my rifle," she assured him. "Fusspot."

  His lips turned upward, but it was a quiet, even smile, with­out dimples, and she did not fully believe it.

  "Come outside," she urged, wishing they'd found a better balance between them. She even went to his side and drew three lines across his forehead with her sooty fingers. "Be an Indian!"

  "What does the thermometer say?"

  Her shoulders sank. "Seven below."

  "I believe I shall stay in, thank you." He hesitated, then added, "Unless you need my help?"

  "No, I'm fine. I just thought you might... well, never mind." Before she'd thought about it, she kissed his whiskery cheek.

  Collier raised his eyebrows. Since she had no real excuse for the gesture, she simply grinned and backed away. "Last chance. You haven't seen anything until you've seen rainbow trout in a cold-water creek."

  "I shall accept my blindness," he assured her dryly.

  So she went alone. It took some effort to get as far as the creek, but that was fine. Days like this reminded her of getting out of the cabin to play when she was little. She'd dressed warmly. She had the rifle, just in case the wolves they'd heard lately came down from the higher mountains and threatened her. And she really did think a good meal of trout, cooked in the last of their butter, might be just what Collier needed to lift his spirits. She would set the table with his silly linen tablecloth and china for the occasion. Perhaps she'd dress for dinner.

  Just this once.

  She broke the ice carefully, as she'd been taught. Falling through would be deadly in this kind of cold. The current was still running in this mountain-fed stream. Even if a body didn't die of shock, she could get swept under more ice, too. And Laurel could imagine no worse death than drowning. So she took plenty of care. Only after she'd cleared the broken ice out of the way and tested the edges for soundness did she settle in to fish.

  She had to take her gloves off long enough to bait the hook with a piece of salt pork, but she doubted it would take long. She could see the trout darting past the hole in the ice, their scales reflecting the crystal water and freezing, midday sun. Barely had she tossed in the hook than one of them bit, and she pulled out a fish almost a foot long.

  She whistled as best as she could through her muffler. Then she unhooked the fish, tossed it onto the ice a few feet up from her, and repeated the process. She warmed her hands under her arms and by blowing on them. It wouldn't do to lose fingers to frostbite, no matter how good the fishing was!

  She caught enough fish for Christmas dinner in the first fifteen minutes, then started catching them to salt. The more trout she pulled out of the creek, the more she wished Collier had come with her. He'd proved a decent hunter; she suspected fishing counted as a gentleman's sport, too—and this kind of success couldn't help but lift a man's spirits. And it did seem his spirits that were in trouble ... hard though it was to imagine anyone's spirit not prospering up here!

  She remembered what Collier had said when she went out into the blizzard: Are you enjoying this? She guessed she was. Up here it didn't much matter whether you were man or woman, young or old, educated or illiterate. Even at its cruelest, the out-of-doors was the one place where she had never felt judged, or as if she were falling shy of expectations, or unsure what to do next. Maybe that was why she'd needed this homestead so much, this homestead that Collier, for all his blue blood, had won for her. Maybe that was why she loved these mountains.

  Laurel had caught almost more fish than she could carry on a line—another reason Collier should have come, being taller! But she had just a smidgen of bacon left, so she figured she might as well drop her hook one last time. Her hands were fine, and her head clear. The ice was still sound, and her rifle lay within reach. She even saw a jackrabbit hop by, so she had no worries of wolves or bears. The day could hardly get better.

  Then she saw the shadow moving under the ice.

  It startled her something fierce at first. She screeched, the closest thing to a scream that had ever left her throat, and scrambled back an extra foot from the hole she'd broken. It looked like a monster, ready to lunge for her!

  Then she recognized a stub of what had once been a branch, reaching from the water as the log rolled, and knew her monster—driftwood! Some broken hunk of tree had washed down the creek, under the ice, and hooked itself on her fishing hole.

  The first thing Laurel did was laugh, the noi
se bouncing off the trees and into the sky. Oh, but this would make a funny story to tell Uncle Benj! Then she figured she'd best encour­age that piece of tree to continue downstream, or it might complicate her ice breaking next time. She looked around, found the stick she'd used to clear broken ice, and poked at the log.

  At first it stayed fast. But when she smacked at it harder, the stub of a branch that had caught on the ice's edge sub­merged, and the looming shadow bumped slowly past her fishing hole.

  There, thought Laurel, proud of her self-sufficiency.

  Then the fishing line that had slyly wrapped around her booted ankle hooked itself to the driftwood and pulled her in after it.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Laurel's first shock was that it had happened at all.

  I was so careful! That was what she thought, even as water closed over her head.

  Then the cold struck. And it did strike, like being thrown from a horse. Cold like Laurel had never imagined. A hurt so violent that the world seemed to stop—and she almost let it.

  Then came fear, a rush of desperation as she thrashed out, grasped with mittened hands at something... anything... everything. Her arm struck hardness. Cold magnified the pain of that ten times, but she made herself clutch for whatever she'd caught with her forearm—an edge of ice, thick and sharp and slippery.

  Something pulled at her leg. Her other boot scrabbled at the rocky creek bottom without purchase. By all rights she should have lost her grip and slipped under. Instead she got her arms over the ice cap and wedged herself, as the log had, against its edge with the push of the burning-cold current.

  She scrabbled at the ice, grabbing only handfuls of snow that stuck to her wet mittens and made her all the clumsier.

  Her clothes were burning too now, as the water soaked through. Worse, something—the fishing line—still yanked on her as the log pulled inexorably downstream, still trying to drag her under.

  Laurel hurt too much to think; she could only do. Some­how she held to the icy creek edge and kicked her water­logged, booted foot—the one not dragging at her—to lunge out. Current and line hauled greedily back. Whenever her good foot hit the rocky bottom of the creek, it slipped off its purchase.

  That was when Laurel realized she might die.

  "Help!" Her voice shuddered out of her, a sort of squawk into the freezing, sparkling air. Her whole body was shud­dering violently, as if to rattle her soul right out of it. Now she screamed the word: "Help!"

  She heard her scream echo against the peaceful gurgle of water, and the clack of her teeth. "Collier, help!"

  But he would not hear her inside. She'd told him she didn't need his help. Now the cabin was too far, the woods too thick.

  Laurel tried to draw her caught leg back, only to feel her other toe slip again off the submerged rocks in a grisly tug-o'-war. She was well and truly snared.

  "Help!" But she heard only her own shuddering voice.

  So she would free herself.

  Somehow, holding on to the ice with her elbows and arms, she managed to fumble the icing glove off her right hand. She hated to plunge her burning hand into the water again, but she had to—had to! Her leg ached from being pulled. She reached under the ice, felt for the line that held her to the log—and felt nothing.

  She tried again, more frantically, thrashing her submerged hand. Then she realized she was hitting something, but just wasn't feeling it. When she drew her arm out of the water, she saw where she'd cut it on the line in her senseless fum­bling.

  It took her a moment to recognize the cuts for what they were, because they were not bleeding.

  I don't want to die. The thought racked her again, as pain­fully as the trembling, as painfully as the strain on her caught leg, her hip. Not now!

  She couldn't do that to her parents.

  She couldn't do that to Collier.

  To raise her right hand back onto the ice, Laurel had to fling it with her shoulder, like a useless, heavy thing already dead. Only once she'd steadied herself again did she draw her left hand close enough to use her teeth to drag off that mitten.

  She looked at her left hand, still alive, still pink with cold. The engagement ring looked like another piece of ice, spar­kling in the sunlight that she'd so foolishly thought benign. It wasn't ice. Neither was it a diamond.

  Glass.

  Her cold fingers wouldn't move, no matter how she willed them. But she could clumsily move her hand, her arm. Shud­dering, whimpering, Laurel bashed the back of her hand against the ice.

  She'd thought she'd lost all feeling in her hand until her brittle knuckles smashed against solid ice. She screamed, wept, couldn't do it again. But the ring sparkled at her, whole and taunting, and she didn't want to die even more.

  Crying now—she could feel the heat in her eyes, and won­dered if the blurring of her vision was steam—she tried again. Then again.

  The third time, the fake stone smashed—and a jagged piece of glass remained in the setting.

  Now Laurel fumbled under the water's surface with her left hand. It helped that she didn't hurt so badly now—except her hand. Trying desperately to hold on to the ice, still catch­ing and then losing hold with her left toe, she swung her hand blindly at where the fishing line dragged at her. She could feel nothing with it, not even the throbbing residue of the blows. The pain of a thousand knives was fading to a dull ache, and her trembling was subsiding, even if the rest of her got clumsier by the second.

  She knew just how bad that was. The sparkling, sunny wa­ter, and the crystalline snow, and the pine boughs high over her... it all seemed suddenly, remarkably beautiful. She felt as she had on her honeymoon, dizzy and spinning.

  No! With drunken, lurching motions, Laurel kept doing the only thing she'd managed to think of: she fumbled at the taut, hidden twine with what she hoped was still the back of her hand.

  Stupid. She should have listened to Papa. Stupid. And Cole. She'd refused to need him, to need anybody, and now...

  Would he feel guilty for having gotten her here, when she died? He shouldn't, but he would. That would be her doing, too.

  I'm so sorry.

  And then, with a sudden, strange stillness, the pulling stopped. Laurel's caught foot touched bottom.

  She'd cut the line.

  Laurel tried to take a breath, for strength. She realized her wet muffler was freezing over her mouth and nose. Still she managed to roll herself out of the creek, into the snow beside the water hole she'd broken, onto the fish she'd caught. She lay there for a moment, and she no longer hurt.

  What a relief, to neither be drowning or hurting. She tried to breathe through the suffocating, stiff wool over her face, and could not. Her stiff, pale hands wouldn't obey her any­more. Only by drawing her face across the snowy ground could she drag off the muffler and draw a breath, shallow even now.

  Frostbite was the least of her worries now. Her sudden, overwhelming need just to lie still and rest—that was the worst of them. It seemed so tempting to relax into the spin­ning, the floating, like drinking champagne.

  But she'd been safe to feel that way before. Collier had been there. He wasn't here now. To be safe, she needed Cole.

  Laurel used her elbows and knees to prop herself up, then tried to stand, but either her clothing weighed too damn much or her legs had no strength left. Maybe both. She crum­pled back into the snow, on her side, and wondered if her tears were starting to freeze on her face. Her lashes sounded crunchy when she blinked.

  It surprised her to see that two of the fish, lying on the ice, were still faintly flopping. Maybe she hadn't been under too long yet. Maybe she had hope ... if only Collier would come.

  Now, even when Laurel tried again to call for help, she had no strength. She had to do something else. Sleep.

  No. Not alone. Not this time.

  Each movement clumsier, each a greater effort, Laurel rolled over in the snow—and stared, nose-to-stock, at her ri­fle.

  Somehow, hands as dead as lengths of
firewood, she man­aged to knock away the rifle's safety. It took her three tries to get a finger under the trigger guard. The first time she tried to squeeze the trigger, her finger just slipped loose again.

  Maybe if she rested ... But she knew better than that. Not alone, she thought again. If this was her last chance to sleep, it shouldn't be alone. She'd done too much alone already.

  It took her five tries before she wedged a lifeless thumb past the trigger guard. She did not try lifting the rifle. It pointed at a snowbank, which would be good enough ... unless the bullet struck a hidden rock, ricocheted, and plugged her.

  The thought struck her as funny, but her laugh caught.

  The rifle's report, when it fired, startled her. That hurt. It broke the peace of this beautiful, sunny, snowy afternoon ... and the afternoon was so beautiful. There were worse days to die.

  Why bother fighting? Collier wouldn't answer a solitary shot. He would think she was shooting some meat. He wouldn't come looking for hours yet, and by then ...

  She couldn't do that to him. Not make him find her here, make him cany her corpse back to her parents. Not when all he'd done was try to help her—more than she'd ever let him.

  Drawing only shallow breaths now, as if maybe her very

  lungs had frozen stiff, Laurel fumbled at her rifle with useless, frozen hands, to eject the empty shell so that she could fire again.

  Collier put on his coat, gloves, hat, and muffler to go out­side—more out of boredom than anything else. Laurel had asked him to come fishing out of pity; he could see that clearly enough. She'd wanted to prove that she could spend the winter here alone. Thus far, with all the assistance she'd needed from him, she was managing that just beautifully.

  He went along with it. What else did he have to do? But her pity he wouldn't tolerate.

  So he headed out alone. The sunshine struck him, dazzling. Instead of hiding in their shed, {he horses stood in the corral, staring out into the woods, looking concerned.

  Collier had to whistle several times before they came to him, and that only because he extended a hand with a sugar cube. He fed one to his own ordinary gelding, Llewellyn, and one to Laurel's Snapper. The horses seemed to enjoy the treat, and nuzzled at his hand for more. When no more was forth­coming, they turned back toward the woods, as if staring at something unseen.