Deborah Camp by Lady Legend Page B

skirts.”
    Tucker pretended to examine the stitching on the mittens, but his mind stitched a different pattern. Was that baby she carried a trapper’s?
    “I suppose you get lonesome for a man,” heventured, hoping she might tell him whether she carried her husband’s baby or someone else’s.
    Angling toward him, she gave him a long, measured stare that prickled. She folded her hands on the rise of her stomach. “Lonesome for a man, you say?”
    “Uh … sure.” He cleared his throat and glanced away. “You’re human.”
    “You think I’m pining here in this cabin for a man?”
    “No, that’s not what I … not pining.”
    “That’s right, captain, I’m not pining. My husband was enough for me. I’m not wishing for anyone else.”
    Now he was completely confused, having thought that her husband might have abused her. “You loved him?”
    A bitter smile trembled on her full lips. “I served him.”
    She blinked once, and Tucker felt as if she’d pulled a heavy drapery across her face, her feelings, the heart of her. If she talked to him now, he knew it would be in that stilted way she used with strangers. She snatched up the silver wolfskin that she was fashioning into a cradle blanket.
    Tucker honored her imposed silence. Lying in his bunk, he wondered if Copper had been pregnant before or after she’d been outcast by the tribe. If she carried a trapper’s baby, then where was he? Why wasn’t he here to see her through this birth? Of course, he could ask, but in her present state of mind, he didn’t figure he would get an answer—a civil one, anyway. She was a moody woman for sure; massaging his temples one minute, then turning her back on him the next. He liked it when she talked to him in that friendly way of hers, but it riled him when she gave him one of her stone-faced Indian looks and barked orders at him.
    He closed his eyes and thought of her red hair. Fire, inside and outside. Like the sun.
    Cabin fever struck him three weeks later. As usual, Copper rose early and left him shortly after breakfast. Normally, he pitied her having to go outside in the cold and fight the snowdrifts. On that day, however, he wanted to go with her, but he knew he couldn’t.
    “How deep is the snow?” he had asked as she’d piled on the various skins she wore to keep warm.
    “Knee-deep in most places.”
    “Sun’s shining today.”
    “Bright as new money,” she’d said. “But I smell a change. Bet it snows again by nightfall.”
    “How can you smell that?”
    “I just can. I can see it, too.” She looked up. “The sky tells me. It changes color. The wind shifts.” She shrugged. “If you open up your eyes, your ears, and your nose, Mother Earth speaks to you.” Then she had left him in the dark confines of the cabin. The walls had pressed in on him.
    Using a long piece of firewood for a cane, he thumped to the door and threw it open. The sun nearly blinded him. He squinted and would have lifted an arm as a shield if he could have done so without letting go of the buffalo robe that covered his nakedness.
    “Hey, Sentry.” He made his tone light and friendly. The dog pricked up his ears at hearing his name. “Let me pet you.” He held out a hand, but withdrew it when the dog showed his teeth. “Okay, okay. You’re as touchy as your mistress.”
    Taking tentative steps, Tucker moved from the cabin to the cleared area outside. The wind puffed, sending a chill through him. He looked at the sky. Clouds gathered overhead, bearing out Copper’s predictions. Tucker sucked in a deep breath and told himself he could smell snow just like Copper, but another voice in his head scoffed. Like it ornot, he was no mountain man. But maybe he could learn to exist in this high country. He certainly had a good teacher in Copper. She knew more about—
    A screech sliced through the air. Tucker froze with fear, his mind telling him the sound was an Indian’s war cry. A bubble of panic ballooned in his mind and