"How'd he find the cabin?" the old man demanded.

"It... it belongs to a friend of his. A Mr. Jones."

"MisterJones?" The cackle was genuine. "MisterJones ? And who mought thisMister Jones be?" He hooked the chair with his toe, pulled it to him. Without taking his eyes off her, he sat, began to pare at his fingernails with the knife.

When Hattie didn't answer, He prodded her with his foot. "Answer me, gal."

"I don't know who he is. Mr.... my husband said he was a trapper, a good friend.

He'd not mind if we used his cabin."

"Your husband said that, hmm? And how does he know this Mister Jones?" He seemed to take great delight in the proper name, repeating it again, several times, cackling with each repetition.

Hattie began to wonder about his reason. "They were partners, I understand, for several years. In the fur trapping trade."

"They was, huh? And what mought your man's name be, then?" He leaned close to her, peering into her eyes.

"Lachlan," Hattie said, wishing she could hold her breath. "It's Emmet Lachlan."

"Ahuh! Can you prove that, gal?"

"No. I.... Yes, I can!" She started to get up. His hand came out and stopped her.

"You jest set right there and prove to me who your man is."

"I'll have to get his knife," she said. "It's got his initials on the handle."

Emmet had given her his smallest knife when she began doing the cooking, jeering at her paring knife as "a toy for little kids."

"Where is it?"

Hattie told him.

He went to the shelf Emmet had built beside the fireplace without taking his eyes off her or his hand off his own knife. Holding Emmet's knife at arm's length, he studied it.

His caution was instinctive. Emmet approached the cabin on a roundabout path, going the last quarter mile on foot.

It was a good thing he had. There were two strange mules in the corral. He faded back into the cottonwoods. cursing himself for leaving Hattie alone. There were damn few men in this empty land who would leave a tender morsel like her untouched, given half a chance.

Did she still live? Making certain was the first thing, before he killed the men who'd taken her. Killed them slow and hard.

He returned to his horse and mule, led them away. A mile and more from the cabin, he found a grassy glade near the river. He unsaddled both animals and hobbled them, knowing there was always a chance he would not return.

He rummaged inside his bedroll, pulled out two more sheathed knives. One went down his shirt, in back, held convenient by a string around his neck. The other slipped inside his high moccasin. He checked shot and powder, loaded his rifle.

For the first time he wished he had another shotgun, instead of his trusty Henry. But he'd sooner rely on his knives any day.

He found an opening within a willow thicket and slipped inside. For the next few hours, he sat, still and observant, watching the closed door of the cabin.

Hattie was alive or she wasn't. He'd do her no good either way by rushing in and getting his fool head blown off.

From his hiding place he could see the corner of the corral. It still held some of Hattie's oxen, as well as the strange mules. He let himself hope. If the oxen were still here, could Hattie be safe? If so, where was she? And where was Odin, her pampered favorite?

Or had her captors butchered the big, tame ox? Were they holding Hattie inside the cabin, using her before they killed her?

There was no activity at the cabin throughout the long, cold afternoon. His butt grew numb from its contact with the damp earth. Occasionally he'd flex a foot or rotate a shoulder, knowing that when something happened, it was apt to happen quickly. He had to be ready to move.

The winter's dusk was closing in when he heard them. First a man's laugh, broken by a cough. Then a woman's, high and clear on the still air. He tensed. Could Silas have returned, so long after he'd given the lad up for lost? No, for his voice would never have deepened so.

The voices drew nearer. Their owners were coming in from a gully off to the east of the cabin. He watched. Waited.

The old man who stepped into his field of view was familiar. Emmet watched for his companion. When Hattie appeared, sitting astride Odin's broad back, he relaxed for the first time since seeing the mules. Hattie was alive! Laughing.

Emmet stood, pushing his way through the willows. He was going to beat that woman for taking up with Buffalo Jones. Hadn't he told her to shoot any intruders?

He met them at the corral gate. Before either could say a word, he said, "Woman, I've been sittin' on my butt thinking on ways to rescue you for the better part of the afternoon. Now I'm hungry, and I'm cold, and I'm still decidin' whether to beat you or to kiss you. I reckon hot coffee and some food might convince me in your favor." He helped her off the ox's broad back, but deliberately didn't let his hands linger at her waist.

Hattie, whose eyes had grown enormous at his quiet words, didn't even stop to take her crutch from where it leaned against the corral, but hobbled up the path toward the cabin.

He watched her for a moment, then turned on the old man who was leaning against a tree. "As for you, you damned old he-coon, where the hell have you been? And where's your girl?"

Buffalo Jones chuckled. "Oh, I've been around, lad. Jest here an' there." He patted Odin on the flank and sent him into the corral. "Don't look like I've been up to as much devilment as you, now does it? If that don't beat all! Em's got himself up and hitched." His laughter filled the quiet woods, big as the man himself, free and unrestrained. "And a finer filly you couldn't have found, I'm thinkin'. She's prime, Em. Right prime!" His congratulatory swat nearly knocked Emmet off his feet.

"She doesn't lead any better than that girl of yours, either," Emmet growled.

"Stubborn and willful, that's what she is. I told her not to let anybody close."

His stomach was still tight with the fear he'd had when he thought of what might have been.

"Don't reckon I give her much choice. I played possum for the longest time afore she snuck a peek out the door. That's when I caught her." Buff held the door open and followed Emmet inside. Immediately the rich smell of stewing elk meat filled Emmet's nostrils. His belly rumbled.

"Next time you do what I say, you hear, woman?" he said, glowering at Hattie.

She simply smiled. "I'm glad you're home," she said.

Later, sitting on a thick chunk of wood he'd dragged inside, Emmet listened as Buff told of his adventures since they'd parted in the spring.

"I headed on up to the Spalding's mission, up there at Lapwai for a while, found my leetle Flower there." He paused to draw on his pipe. "She went on up after havin' some trouble with a couple of fellas at Grande Ronde. Seems they thought she oughta be available, just 'cause she's a 'breed. She took exception to their friendliness, cut one a mite." He chuckled. "Told me it was easier to take off for a visit with her mother's kin than to stay around and convince folks she was the injured party."

Buffalo went on telling of his adventures, but Emmet's mind drifted. He watched Hattie, cleaning up after supper. She hadn't said much when he told her the gold was gone, had only gone white and still for a moment. He'd wanted to tell her he'd take care of her, stay with her. He wasn't much of a substitute for a bag full of gold coins, but he should be able to take care of her and her child so they wouldn't starve.

He had said nothing, instead. Sooner or later he'd let her down. The less she was expecting from him, the less hard she'd hit when she reached the bottom.

And now he had to give her one more disappointment.

"You'd better not count on seein' Silas before spring," he told her. "Not if he had to go clear up to Lapwai. Even if Flower was still there, they'd never get across the Blues this late."

Chapter Six.

Buffalo Jones refused to share the cabin. He and Emmet built a leanto up against the back side of the river rock fireplace for him. "I'm a noisy creeter," he told Hattie when she objected to taking an old man's home. "An' I don't want to be makin' you uncomfortable with my spittin' and hawkin' and snorin'."

As if he could. As soon as Buffalo had accepted her as Emmet's wife, he'd turned from a cranky old bear into a courtly and kind protector. He insisted on carrying wood and water when he saw what effort it took her to manage her crutch as well as a bucket or the canvas wood carrier Emmet had made her. In the four days they had been alone before Emmet's return, she'd come to love him as she had her maternal grandfather, who'd died when she was eight.

He did consent to take his meals with them, when he was at home. It was his habit to disappear for a day, or two or three, sometimes taking one of his mules, sometimes on foot. He usually brought back food--dry, shriveled, but still sweet berries found in a secret, sheltered rock cleft, starchy roots which baked up as tasty as any potato, watercress gathered from cold, sweet springs.

Although Hattie had been picking the miner's lettuce that grew near the hot springs and Emmet had introduced her to the versatile cat-tail root, she welcomed the variety Buffalo's offerings added to their diet.

Buffalo was gone when the first big snowfall occurred. Hattie found the air almost warm when she went out for her morning soak, but thought nothing of it until Emmet, commented that it smelled like snow. Since the previous falls had been light, leaving less than two inches on the ground, she wasn't worried about Buffalo. He was a mountain man, after all, and far more experienced in taking care of himself than she would ever be.

The first flakes fell before noon.

She kept busy indoors after dinner, leaving the door ajar, saving their precious candles. She sorted Karl's underclothing into garments that Emmet or Buffalo might be able to use and those old enough, soft enough to use as baby clothes and blankets. As she did so, she found herself wondering what she would do if Silas didn't return with Flower, or if he brought the young half-Indian woman after the baby came.

Hattie knew little about caring for a newborn. She had married Karl when Annie was three months old, and she'd had little contact with her neighbors' children until they were older. Both of her older sisters had helped with the babies that their mother bore every year or so. Hattie had not, for she was usually in the farmyard, following her father like a shadow.

By late afternoon she was using one of their precious candles to augment the light from the fire. It had been burning almost an hour when Emmet came in. She was picking apart a nightshirt, thinking that she should be able to get a nightgown from the sleeves, several diapers from the front and back. He stamped the snow off his feet, just outside the open door, startling her. Her stool, a sturdy three-legged one Buffalo had built when he saw how her legs didn't reach the ground in his big chair, wobbled.

"Gettin' blustery," he said. His shoulders were white with snow and his hair was all but covered with a dripping white cap.

Hattie reached for her shawl. "I'd better get the oxen in," she said, thinking how difficult it would be for her to make her way through deep snow. She hadn't given up the crutch for outdoor work yet, since her leg still tended to give way when she got tired or if she put weight on it too suddenly.

"They're in," he said, shedding his coat and hanging it on one of the pegs beside the fireplace. He wiped a hand across his head, flipping snow and water onto the packed sand floor. "As soon as I saw it was going to snow more than a skiff, I gave 'em some hay and put 'em inside."

She knew how he hated using any of the scant supply of grass hay they'd been able to lay by for the winter. "What about Buffalo?"

He knelt before the fire, pouring himself coffee from the pot that sat on the hearth all the time. "What about him? He'll be back when he gets here." He shook himself. "Damn cold out there!"

"Don't swear," she said, knowing it would do no good, but determined to keep trying.

He ignored her. "I've been thinkin'," he said, standing with his back to the fire, "and I've decided it's time we were man and wife."

Hattie almost dropped the scissors. After a moment's shock, she folded the half-dismembered nightshirt, placed it and the scissors in the leather sack she was using for her sewing, and set the bag back under her cot. She returned to her stool, still speechless. When she found her voice, all she could say was, "I thought we were," knowing full well she was ignoring his unspoken thought.

"You've got the marriage lines, but you've never been my wife."

"You promised," she said, remembering his exact words. "You agreed to see me to the Willamette Valley and hunt for me and guard my stock. And you said you'd sleep alone." Even as she reminded him, she admitted that the thing she'd feared had come to pass.

She cared for Emmet Lachlan far more than she wanted to care for a man who'd leave her as soon as he could. Each day she fought her growing love for him, knowing that, for her, to love someone was to lose him.

Quick as a cat he was on his knees before her, his ice-blue eyes looking straight into hers. "I promised," he said softly, "for two months. Not for a winter alone with you." His hands were like steel bands on her shoulders, his breath hot and coffee-scented in her face. "Great God, woman, I see you, smell you, every blessed day until I'm like to lose my mind!"

"We're not alone." It was a feeble rejoinder, but all she could think of, with him so close.

"We are at night. And that's all that matters."

The smoky passion in his voice spoke to her of sensations she'd only suspected, delights she'd had only hints of. Her own body betrayed her as it readied itself for him. Heat blossomed in her belly, her breasts seemed to swell and become even more tender.

The smell of him--sweat and smoke and desire--filled her nostrils, spread throughout her until it eroded her will like rushing water against a sandy bank.

Warmth emanated from his fingertips which now stroked her cheek, now traced her hairline across her nape. Flames and ice, shivery, fiery, disturbing and tempting, shot through her, from her curling toes to her empty hands, her yearning mouth.

"Ah, Hattie," he whispered against her mouth, "you are so sweet." His tongue slipped between her lips, traced a line along her teeth and teased her tongue, luring it into soft play, advance and retreat, touch and withdraw. He suckled her lips, pulling them between his teeth for tiny nips, painful in their sweetness. He retreated, laying soft kisses along her lips, across her cheeks, at the point of her chin.

His hand, still at her shoulders, tightened and pulled, until she was in his lap, her legs spread across the gritty sand. His arms closed around her, drawing her upper body close to his until her flattened breasts against his chest almost hurt. In a moment she felt his palm on her bare back, under the shirt she wore untucked and loose over her ripening body. She arched, wanting its warmth over each spare inch of her skin, feeling like a stroked cat must feel.

When his hand found her breast, she sighed, relishing the stroking, squeezing, caressing of his fingers as they circled ever closer to her throbbing, erect nipple. And when, at last, he took the swollen bud between two fingers and rubbed, she gasped with the shocking pleasure of it.

Hattie felt a cold draft and realized he'd unbuttoned her shirt. When his hot mouth closed over the aching nipple, she gasped anew at the sensation, for she'd thought nothing could feel so good as the tugging and kneading of his fingers.

She was aware that he had eased her shirt from her arms. His fingers fumbling at the rope she used as a belt registered in her mind. She knew when he laid a callused palm across her rounded belly. And she didn't care. All that mattered was the shower of bliss his mouth sent though her. Until he stopped.

He was dead still for a long moment, his spread fingers heavy against her belly.

She felt the tension spread through his body as he slowly withdrew his hand.

"God!" The word burst from his with explosive force. "Oh, God, Hattie, I didn't mean to hurt you." He rebuttoned her britches, retied the belt, while Hattie lay, dazed, in his arms. All the while he muttered apologies, regrets.

When he lifted her upright and reached for her shirt, she came to herself. "What are you doing?" She heard a quaver in her voice, one that was reflected in her limbs. "You didn't hurt me."

"Only because you're lucky," he snarled. His face was set in harsh lines, made doubly fierce by the flickering firelight. "Why didn't you stop me?"

She still didn't understand. "Stop you? Why should I stop you? I'm your wife."

No longer could she deny that she wanted him with a desperate need she'd never felt for Karl's lovemaking.

"And you're pregnant. How could you forget? I did, but how could you?" Again he held up her shirt, reminding Hattie that she was nude to the waist. And cold, despite the fire only a few feet away.

As she obediently slipped her arms into the sleeves he held, she realized that she had been on the brink of the most horrible mistake she could make. Silently she buttoned the shirt, pulled herself onto her stool. Without a word, she turned her back on him and stared into the fire.

She wanted him. Wanted him with a stormy, compelling hunger.

She wanted to plead with him to alleviate the hunger, quench the fires, appease the desire.

She wanted to thank him for having the strength she lacked, for if she gave herself to him, she would never be able to let him go.

The only sound in the room was the hiss of the fire, an occasional pop as flames found a knot or a pocket of pitch. He sat on the floor, his head bent, arm resting across one upraised knee. Also staring into the fire, as if it held answers.

"Why?" she said finally, once she could speak without weeping, without pleading.

No matter how right it was, his rejection hurt.