When his hard thigh eased between her legs, she parted them for him, as far as her nightgown allowed, feeling hot moisture gathering. His hand left her breast and trailed across her belly, noticeably swollen now with her advancing pregnancy.

And he hesitated, his palm resting across the upper swell, as her child moved.

Instantly he pulled back so that he could see her face. "Was that...?"

"Yes. It was my baby. She's been moving for some time now." Hattie rested her hand over his, holding it in place. After a moment, the baby moved again, a gentle but distinct drawing of a tiny limb across the inside of her womb.

Emmet's eyes were dark in his shadowed face, his mouth a grim line. She touched his lower lip, wanting to kiss it but not yet daring enough to pull his face down to hers. "She becomes more real each day." Already she knew she would have a girl. The certainty had come to her the first time she'd felt the baby move, a butterfly-touch unlike anything she'd ever felt before. "I'm going to name her Ellen."

"Ellen. That's a pretty name." But he seemed distracted, as if he was thinking deeply of something else.

"It was my mother's name." What she didn't tell him was that it was also the name of the fair maiden in her favorite poem. Or that he reminded her of the hero of that same poem. He rode out of the west, he rode all alone. And he was bold and brave and strong.

Removing his hand from her belly, Emmet pulled the coat closed under her chin.

"Let's get you inside before you freeze." The warmth was gone from his voice and she shivered. For the first time since he'd kissed her, she felt the bitter cold.

He followed her back to the cabin, regretting the impulse that had led him to wake her, to share the beauty of the night with her. He'd forgotten--had made himself forget--her pregnancy. Ever since the cold had set in, she'd worn loose wool shirts belonging to her dead husband, so he hadn't really seen her shape for some time. Otherwise, he'd have noticed the swelling of her breasts, of her belly, would have been reminded once again of the fragile life she carried.

Now he watched her in the dim light from the fireplace as she took off his heavy coat. Always before he'd been careful to step outside while she changed, while she got herself settled in bed and decently covered. For his own defense, not her protection. Even the glimpse of a black-stockinged ankle sent waves of heat through him, brought memories of her slim, naked body to him. He didn't need to see the sweet curves of her body under her loose clothing to further inflame his imagination.

The linen gown--one of the few garments of her own to have survived the disaster at the crossing--curved over her breasts, hinted at the swell of her abdomen. It skimmed her feet, so that only when she swung them into the bunk did he see more than pink toes, a high arch.

"Are you coming to bed?"

Great God! Would that he could come to her bed, could bury himself in her warm body, find forgetfulness in her womanly heat. "Later. I'll set a while."

"Thank you for showing me the lights, Emmet. They were beautiful."

"Go to sleep."

Every rustle of her bedclothes was loud to his ears. He could hear the quiet whisper of her breath. He almost thought he could hear the steady beat of her heart.

He pulled the bearskin coat off its peg. "I'm goin' out to see how Weeyum's doin'," he said, knowing that if he stayed in the cabin with her a second longer, he'd be in her bed.

"You and Em havin' trouble?" Buffalo asked her the next morning when he came in from his daily soak.

Hattie shook her head. She was trimming mold off the last of their pork bacon.

Emmet had said he doubted he could get any more from Fort Boise. In winter no one had food to spare so far from civilization. She supposed she should be grateful that they never lacked for meat.

"He ought'n to go off and leave you alone in the middle of winter," Buffalo said after a while. "It ain't like he needed to hunt today, and his traps are likely all froze in."

"I guess he figures you and Weeyum can take care of me," Hattie said, not looking at him. She rather thought she could take care of herself, but it would never do to say so. Buffalo, like all men, liked to feel important.

"Huh! A sick old man an' an ignorant boy! Fat lot of good we'd do if a ba'r decided to come through that there door." He gestured at the unbarred door.

Hattie had left it open for Weeyum, who had finally gotten to the point of coming inside for the noon meal.

He still sat on the floor next to the door, though, as if afraid someone would try to make him prisoner.

"He's a good man, Em is," Buffalo opined. "A mite restless, but that ain't all bad. He won't be underfoot all the time."

Hattie wanted a husband whowas underfoot all the time, so she said nothing.

"O' course, if you was to be nicer to him, he mought stay about more 'n he does." Buffalo lit his pipe with a splint from the fire. "A man likes to feel like his comin' and goin' matters."

Hattie chopped the small chunk of salvaged bacon into bits and put them into the Dutch oven to brown. Weeyum had brought her some cat-tail roots this morning.

Where he'd found them, she had no idea. She would have guessed there wasn't any unfrozen ground anywhere about. They didn't taste much like potatoes, but they'd do for a soup.

She sat on the stool beside the fire, grateful for the heat against her face.

When she went out to the outhouse this morning, she'd just about frozen.

Although the cold had moderated somewhat, white fog had moved in to crystallize on everything--the ground, the trees, the oxen and horses' shaggy coats.

Buffalo scooted his great chair closer, until he sat across the mouth of the fireplace from her. "Hattie, gal, you ain't still thinking to go on to the Willamette, are you?" He was watching her with a sharp, curious gaze.

"Of course I am. I can't stay here. Emmet promised Goat Runner that we'd be leaving next summer."

"Em ain't gonna like livin' in the Valley. He's a man who likes space."

"I can't help that." She hesitated. "Buffalo, I can't raise my daughter here, where the nearest neighbors are...." She paused, remembering that his wife had been Indian. "So far from civilization."

She pulled the Dutch oven away from the flames. "I didn't want to come in the first place," she confessed. "It was Karl. He was never satisfied. He sold the farm--it had been his first wife's--after we'd been married about two years, and we went to Philadelphia. He was a good cabinet maker." She didn't want Buffalo to think Karl had failed to care for her or for Annie. "But he kept talking to people who were moving west and he decided that he'd do better there. So we went to Missouri."

She paused to pull some tiny wild onions from the braid that hung in the far corner. Without even peeling them, she tossed them into the pot. "We farmed there too," she went on as she added the crisp cat-tail roots to the sizzling bacon grease. Actually she had done most of the farming on the small acreage they'd rented for a little over a year. "Then Karl decided to move on to Oregon."

"You're in Oregon now, gal," Buffalo said. "You don't have to go any farther."

"I'll go on to Oregon--to the Willamette," she said. "I have to go on."

"Wal, maybe he'll settle," was all Buffalo would say. Shortly thereafter he fell into a doze, Hattie went on with her soup making. She was worrying more and more about the old man. Since Christmas he'd seemed to worsen rapidly. Now he rarely went anywhere but out to his "bathtub." And he didn't do that every day.

There was no longer any denying what he'd told her. Buffalo Jones was dying, despite all her prayers.

Chapter Nine.

Hattie knew it was somewhere around the middle of February, although she couldn't have said whether it was Sunday or Thursday. Just this morning she'd seen green in the grass along the little stream that drained from Buffalo's bathtub. And the air was warm with promise. She could almost smell spring.

It was a perfect day for washing.

"Mornin' Missus," Weeyum said as she arrived at the corral. "Mighty fine day, ain't it?" Dawg backed off, ears laid back, but at least he no longer ran from her.

Hattie let the basket of laundry drop the last few inches. Standing, she rubbed the small of her back. Bending over the bathtub was getting more and more difficult. Perhaps she should take Buffalo's advice and just sit in the hot water while she washed herself and her underclothing.

Hattie knew Weeyum was watching as she draped her nightgown and chemise over the peeled logs. He often watched her, seeming fascinated with the most ordinary things--as if he'd always lived apart from civilized people. Although back East she would have hung sheets on lines to either side of her underclothing, here she simply didn't care.

She didn't even blush when Weeyum said, "My mist'ess, she had herself some duds like that, with all that fancy stuff on 'em." He touched the lace at the top of her chemise with a hesitant finger.

The gesture made Hattie notice the ragged sleeve of his shirt, the threadbare trousers that ended mid-calf. The fabric that had heretofore been covered by his equally ragged jacket was gray, stiff. She realized it was beyond filthy. No wonder she could often smell him when he came inside the cabin, to sit quietly by the door. "Come with me to the cabin," she told him when she had finished smoothing the cuffs of Emmet's shirt so they wouldn't wrinkle as they dried.

Buffalo lay on her bunk now, rarely leaving it except with Emmet's help. He seldom ate more than simple broths, and even those sat uneasily on his stomach.

Emmet had brought some herbs from the Indians downriver which seemed to ease his pain, but they made him drowsy.

Hattie sank to her knees beside the bunk. "Buffalo, are you awake," she said softly.

"Jes' restin' my eyes," he said, a trace of the old humor in his voice.

"I need you to do something for me."

"Gal, I'll do anything you want, jest so long 's I don't have to do it standin'

up."

"I want you to talk Weeyum out of his clothes. They're filthy."

"Now if that ain't jest like a woman, wantin' to clean a man up and make him smell like roses and petunies." He struggled to sit up, until Hattie wrapped an arm around his shoulders and helped him.

"You old fraud," she told him. "You know you like to soak in your bathtub."

"Yeah, but not so's to get clean. I do it to ease the rheumatiz in my bones."

"Well, you can just go ease your rheumatiz with Weeyum this morning." She knew he often felt better after a soak, and Emmet was upriver, checking on the livestock. Why had she never thought to have Weeyum take Buffalo into the bathtub before? "And while you're in there, I'll just take those filthy clothes of his. He can wear some of Karl's old pants, and maybe Emmet...."

"Give him my 'skins," Buffalo said. "I ain't never gonna use 'em again."

"Oh, Buffalo, of course...."

"Gal, don't lie to either one of us. I'll never need those 'skins again and they're likelier to fit the lad than anything Emmet has."

Hattie had to agree. While Emmet was almost as tall as Weeyum, he was slim where the Negro was wide and heavily muscled. Buffalo's buckskins were almost as disreputable looking as the rags Weeyum wore, but they did not smell. According to Buffalo, that was because the leather "jest naturally don't take on a man's scent."

She called Weeyum inside. Shortly he and Buffalo were hobbling down the path to the bathtub, the young man taking most of the old trapper's weight. But at least Buffalo was on his feet, a matter of pride, Hattie knew.

She busied herself about the cabin while they soaked, grateful for the warm weather. The firelight was not enough for her to sew by, and she had used all the rushlights she'd made. As soon as the afternoon sun struck the front of the cabin, she could do the mending she had been wanting to get to. Emmet had taken the elbow out of the red calico shirt, and she needed to do something about the wool trousers she was wearing most of the time. Her knees were entirely too visible through the threadbare cloth.

The men returned after about an hour. Buffalo looked better than he had earlier, although his skin still had a grayish tinge to it. Weeyum filled out the trapper's buckskins well, although they were a little short in the arms and legs. No matter. At least he was clothed and didn't smell.

Weeyum eased Buffalo into the mound of skins that served as a seat against the outside wall of the cabin. Hattie tucked a blanket about him, for a slight breeze reminded them that today was only a brief respite from winter. Once Buffalo was settled, she looked at Weeyum.

Had it not been for his dark skin, she would never have known he was the same man. He stood tall in the borrowed buckskins, as if he'd donned Buffalo's pride along with his clothing. His smile was so wide, she was afraid it would split his face in half, and his eyes met hers straight on instead of furtively. "Don't you look just fine," she told him. "Turn around now, and let me see it all."

He rotated slowly.

"Get my pack, gal," Buffalo said from behind her.

Hattie went into the leanto where Buffalo's gear was still stored. She tried to lift his pack, found she could not. So she dragged it outside and around the corner of the cabin. "What have you got in there, rocks?" she said when she'd placed it at Buffalo's feet, where he could reach it.

He rummaged about in its depths. Finally he pulled out a sheathed knife, smaller than the big Bowie knife Emmet carried, but of a respectable size nonetheless.

He pulled the blade clear of the sheath.

Hattie saw that it was shaped much like the butcher knife she'd lost along with the rest of her household goods.

"I traded me a nice plew for this up at Lapwai last summer," Buffalo said, running a finger carefully along the blade. "It's a Russell knife. There ain't none better." He flipped it in his hand, holding the handle out toward Weeyum.

"You take good care of it, hear?"

Weeyum made no move to accept the knife.

"Take it, boy! Take it!" Buffalo snapped. "Don't jest stand there with your mouth open, catchin' flies."

A tentative hand reached out. Weeyum's fingers closed carefully about the handle.

Hattie wanted to weep at the wonder shining in his face.

"You givin' to me?"

"I shore am, boy. I ain't got no use for it no longer, and you're gonna need somethin' more than that leetle, bitsy blade you carry."

Immediately Weeyum was suspicious. "How you know 'bout that?"

"Wal, how'd you think? Me and Em, we looked you over when he brung you in, half drowned. You had that leetle foldin' knife stuck down yore pants, we left it thar. Figured you couldn't do no harm with it, and a man's needful to go armed."

Buffalo coughed and a grimace of pain contorted his face. "Here, now, you take this too. No sense in ruinin' a good blade for lack of a sheath."

This time Weeyum didn't hesitate. He took the sheath. Shortly it hung at his waist, looking as if it had always been there.

Hattie could have sworn he stood even taller, even prouder. "You know," she said, "you ought to have a man's name to go with your new clothes."

Weeyum looked at her, the suspicion back in his face. "What you mean?"

"Well, 'Weeyum' sounds to me like a boy's name. Like, oh," she shrugged, "'Tommy' or 'Bobby' or 'Sammy.' I think you should be 'William' from now on.

That's a proud name."

"Weel-yum."