Wayward Wind Read online

  “I want to be with you… forever.”

  “You’re a stubborn little baggage, and will take strong handlin’. I don’t know if I’m up to it.” Cooper leaned against the tree, his long legs spread wide, and pressed her against him intimately. “You’d better get back to the house,” he murmured, but his arms tightened around her even as he said the words. He kissed her throat just behind her ear. His lips moved to her face, his hands to her hips.

  Under his stroking hands, Lorna’s body went slack with sensuousness and moved wantonly against him, pressing into every crook and curve of his body. Hungrily, blindly, she sought his mouth, and her kiss conveyed the deep heat inside her which was a new and delicious feeling. Whatever the future held, she thought, tonight is mine. Tonight I’ll know the joy of coupling with my mate.

  “Sweetheart? We’ve got to stop—” His voice was ragged with emotion.

  “No! I don’t want to! I ache for you—”

  “If we don’t stop now—I’ll not be able to!”

  “I’m yours. I’m your woman.”

  * * *

  “DOROTHY GARLOCK IS ONE OF THOSE GIFTED STORYTELLERS WHO IS ABLE TO BLEND BEAUTIFUL LOVE STORIES WHILE AT THE SAME TIME RECREATING THE DOWN-TO-EARTH REALITY OF OUR PIONEERING ANCESTORS.”

  —Affaire de Coeur

  Books by Dorothy Garlock

  Almost Eden

  Annie Lash

  Dream River

  Forever Victoria

  A Gentle Giving

  Glorious Dawn

  Homeplace

  Lonesome River

  Love and Cherish

  Larkspur

  Midnight Blue

  Nightrose

  Restless Wind

  Ribbon in the Sky

  River of Tomorrow

  The Searching Hearts

  Sins of Summer

  Sweetwater

  Tenderness

  The Listening Sky

  This Loving Land

  Wayward Wind

  Wild Sweet Wilderness

  Wind of Promise

  With Hope

  Yesteryear

  Published by

  WARNER BOOKS

  Copyright

  POPULAR LIBRARY EDITION

  Copyright © 1986 by Dorothy Garlock

  All rights reserved.

  Popular Library® and the fanciful P design are registered trademarks of Warner Books, Inc.

  Popular Library books are published by

  Warner Books, Inc.

  Hachette Book Group

  237 Park Avenue

  New York, NY 10017

  Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com.

  First eBook Edition: August 2009

  ISBN: 978-0-446-56422-9

  Contents

  “I want to be with you… forever.”

  Books by Dorothy Garlock

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  From Dorothy Garlock

  This book is lovingly dedicated to the memory of my mother, Nan Carroll Phillips, who loved poetry, music and all things romantic.

  She may have written the poem I used in this book, “Will You Love Me When I’m Old.” I don’t know—I found it among her papers.

  Come live with me, and be my love;

  And we will all the pleasures prove

  That valleys, groves, hills and fields,

  Woods or steepy mountains yields.

  —Christopher Marlowe,

  “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love”

  Chapter

  One

  With a breathy hiss, the whip sliced through the air. It burned the man’s bare buttocks like a firebrand and beads of blood popped out on his white skin.

  “Yeeow!” he yelled as the thin leather of the whip struck him again. He reared up from the girl who was kicking and thrashing beneath him, and the leather wrapped itself around his thighs like a serpent.

  “Get off her, you… ruttin’ stud!” The whip descended again, this time striking him with even greater force as rage gave strength to the arm of the girl wielding it. “Get off her or I’ll take your filthy hide off in strips and feed it to the buzzards!”

  The man flung himself toward the gunbelt he had discarded when lust had been all that was on his mind, but the leather lashed out again and the gun spun out of his reach. The girl in the britches and long shirt, tightly belted at her waist, sprang from her horse and landed lightly on her feet without missing a stroke with the whip. It swished as it leaped to its target.

  “Goddamn you, Lorna!” the man yelled. “What the hell’s the matter with you? Brice said I could—” He pulled up his britches and dived for the underbrush to escape the lash. “You goddamn she-wolf—”

  “Yellow-backed, belly-crawlin’ buzzard bait! All the brains you got is there!” She grabbed up his gun and fired into the brush. “Damn you,” she yelled. “I hope I shot it off!”

  “Someday I’ll haul you off that horse and slap the shit outta you—” His shouted threat was drowned out by the sound of the second shot fired from his gun.

  “You’re not man enough to haul a sick pup off a horse, Billy Tyrrell! Hear me?” Lorna grasped the gun by the barrel and flung it far out into a tangle of briar bushes. She heard the man’s strangled bellow of fury and glimpsed him darting behind a curtain of cedars.

  “Did he hurt you, Bonnie?” She turned to the girl who sat unanswering on the ground with her arm over her face, the bulge of her pregnancy obvious beneath her thin dress. Lorna knelt down beside her. “Does Brice know that polecat’s after you?” she asked gently, her voice belying the fury that almost choked her.

  Bonnie lowered her arm and looked at her. Her eyes were dry, dull, and reflected a hopelessness that tore at Lorna’s heart. “Brice sent me down here knowin’ that Billy’d be here.” Her voice sank to the thinnest thread of sound.

  “Oh, Bonnie.” Dark, violet-blue eyes glittered with a cold light. “That low-down, miserable excuse for a man!”

  Bonnie got shakily to her feet and pulled the twigs from her hair. She was a half-head taller than Lorna and thin to the point of gauntness, except for her ballooned abdomen. She wasn’t pretty; her mouth was too wide, her nose slightly crooked, and her cheekbones too prominent. But her brown eyes had a gentle, doelike quality and her dark red hair curled tightly.

  “He says I’m a crippled… slut, and this is all I’m good for.” She pulled the sleeve of her dress down over the stub at the end of her left arm. “He says the sight of it makes him sick.”

  “Aah!” Lorna snorted angrily. She had a long mane of blue-black hair, and now she whipped it back over her shoulder with a quick toss of her head. “He makes me sick!” Her expression hardened. “You’re coming home with me,” she said firmly.

  “I can’t. He’d come for me.” There was a fearful tremor in her voice.

  “Pa won’t let him take you if he knows how he’s using you.”

  Bonnie shook her head. “He knows—”

  “Godam
ighty!” The word exploded from Lorna. “You mean—”

  “Not your pa,” Bonnie said quickly. “But… he knows Brice told Billy Tyrrell he could have his way with me, if I was willin’. But I ain’t, Lorna! I ain’t no whore!”

  “I know that. When is the baby due?”

  “I don’t rightly know, but I think in two or three months.” She looked away from Lorna’s angry stare. “There ain’t nothin’ I can do. Brice wed me. The preacher said the words.”

  “That addle-brained fool who spoke words over you was no more a preacher than I am. Brice is a low-down schemer. He knew just what would make you beholden to him.”

  The ring of iron on a stone caused both women to turn toward the man approaching on a big buckskin horse. He was hatless, and his anger was evident in the redness of his face. Lorna could feel the fear that radiated from the girl beside her.

  “I heard shootin’,” he said and pulled his horse to a halt. He laid his angry glance on Bonnie. “What in hell’s goin’ on?”

  “I was shooting,” Lorna said, her voice icy cold. “I was shooting at that no-good piece of trash you sent down here to pleasure himself on Bonnie.”

  “Is that what she said?”

  “It’s what he said, you cold-blooded… lout!”

  The man drew in a deep quivering breath. His nostrils flared angrily. “Have you ever tried mindin’ your own goddamned business?” he snarled.

  Lorna was fully aware that Bonnie would suffer from her interference, but it was too late to do anything except try to get her away from him.

  “Come home with me, Bonnie.” She caught the girl’s arm and tried to turn her to face her.

  “I can’t… Lorna—”

  “Get on back up to the house,” Brice ordered.

  “You don’t have to,” Lorna said urgently.

  Bonnie hesitated, then moved away, her shoulders slumped dejectedly. Suddenly she paused and looked over her shoulder at the man on the horse.

  “Mind me, goddammit!” Brice shouted.

  Bonnie’s terror burst from her in a choked sob as she ran, stumbling, up the path.

  “You’re going to kill her and the babe she’s carrying!” Lorna accused. She stood with her hands on her hips, the whip curled around her wrist. “Not even an animal treats its mate the way you treat Bonnie.”

  “You keep your blasted nose out of my business, hear? And keep away from my wife.”

  “She’s no more your wife than I am, Brice Fulton. You had some fake preacher say the words so she’d be docile. A man who’d sell a woman out as a whore is as low as a snake’s belly. What’s Billy paying, Brice? A jug of whiskey? Or are you getting him to steal a few steers for you?”

  Brice Fulton was a large man with a ruddy coloring and pale green eyes that had a way of sliding away from a direct confrontation. But now he fixed his hard gaze on Lorna, and the anger in him came out and struck at her brutally.

  “You little twat. You think you’re so goddamn high, lordin’ it over everybody. You’re nothin’ but a backwoods slut that’s never been outta these mountains. You don’t know the first thing ’bout actin’ like a lady. Just look at ya—in those britches and your pa’s old shirt and actin’ so hoity-toity. I’ve been to places that’d make your eyes bug out—”

  “Well, la-de-da!” Lorna threw back her head and loosed a shout of laughter that bounced back and forth between the walls of the narrow canyon. She looked up at the man’s unshaven, unkempt, thoroughly disreputable face and her lips curled in a sneer. “Are you saying you’re… quality?” Lorna could use her voice unkindly when crossed, and her tone made the word a profound insult. She laughed again and moved around him to go to her horse.

  Brice jumped his mount in front of her and his hand reached for her hair. As swiftly as a deer she sprang out of his reach. He sidestepped his mount to pin her against a tree.

  “What you need is a strap on your butt ’n a week on your back in my bed. That’d take the strut outta ya!”

  “You make me want to puke!”

  “I’m tellin’ ya to stay away from Bonnie,” he snarled and crowded his horse still closer to her.

  “If you hurt her—”

  “It ain’t no business a yours what I do with the cripple.”

  “You dumb… jackass!” Lorna sneered. “You’re the cripple. You’ve got nothing between your ears but hot air!”

  “Someday I’ll wring that blasted neck of yours!” He lifted his hand as if to strike her. At that instant an arrow cut through the air and passed inches from his head. The tip buried itself in the trunk of the tree so close to him that the flapping shaft almost touched him. Brice flung himself back and gigged his horse roughly. “What the hell.”

  “The next one will land right under your stupid ear and come out the other.” Lorna leaned nonchalantly against the tree, her small, tight figure wholly relaxed now, amusement in her violet-blue eyes. “C’mon, Brice. Reach for me again,” she taunted. “I want to see if White Bull can put a hole in your ugly head.”

  “You… bitch!” Only his fear of the Indian kept his hands off her. “Someday I’ll get you off by yourself ’n take that smirk off your face!” He almost strangled on his anger. He jerked his horse roughly and sent it scurrying out of the clearing.

  “If you hurt Bonnie I’ll hear about it—then watch your back,” she called after him. She picked up her battered flat-crowned hat, jammed it down on her head, and mounted her horse. “The varmint,” she muttered. “The weasel, the stinking polecat, slimy snake, filthy hog—”

  Volney Burbank sat his small dun horse on the brush-clogged shoulder of the hill overlooking the ravine. He watched with sharp, interested eyes as Lorna mounted her horse and turned him in the direction of the hill. He wiped the snuff stains from his lips with the back of his hand, grinned, and shook his head. If there were anyone in the world the old mountain man loved, it was this girl. Volney had been there when her grandmother had first spanked her bottom. He’d heard her squall just as he’d heard her mother squall when she’d first seen the light of day.

  Since he first came to these mountains back in the thirties, more than forty years ago, Volney Burbank had known every generation of Lightbodys. Back in 1810, Baptiste Lightbody, known simply as Light, had brought his bride out from the Missouri Territory. They had crossed land never seen by the white man and had settled in these mountains. They made friends with the Cheyenne, the Dakota and the Sioux. Now they were a legend. Their story had been passed down from generation to generation among both Indian and the Wasicun. Light had been a fearless, deadly foe to his enemies, but true and faithful to his friends. It was said that Maggie, his childlike wife, was beautiful beyond belief, and that the Indians believed her to be of the spirit world. According to the stories passed down, she could run through the woods as fleet as a deer with her feet scarcely touching the ground. She could calm a wild beast with a soothing hand and could sing like a bird. Light loved her more than life. The Indians believed that even the manner in which they died was magical. Light and his beloved were struck by lightning during a thunderstorm. They died and were buried together deep in the forest they loved.

  Two of their sons had had itchy feet and wandered on West. The third stayed, wed an immigrant’s daughter, Marthy, and raised his family on the homestead in the tradition of his mother and father. Volney had known Lorna’s grandparents when they were very young. He had celebrated the birth of each of their six children. Only two girls had lived; one married a teamster and went to Oregon to homestead; the other daughter, pretty as a mountain flower, forever seeking laughter and sunshine, stayed, wed, and had borne Lorna. Marthy had said that Lorna was very much like Maggie. Maggie’s hair had been as black as midnight to the day she died, and Lorna’s was black and shiny as a crow’s wing. The girl had been raised wild and free by her mother and her grandmother.

  Volney frowned and his large, gnarled hands gripped the saddle horn as he pondered what had caused a pretty young woman like Lorna’s
mother to wed up with a sorry man like Frank Douglas. Frank had come West during the gold rush and completely dazzled the young mountain girl.

  “Horseshit!” the old man muttered and spat in the grass. “There’s no explainin’ women or their ways.” The only good thing to come from it, he mused, was Lorna. After her mother died trying to have another child, there was nothing to hold what little good there was in Frank. Old Marthy had kept a fair hold on things until she keeled over a couple years back. Now, all that was standing between Lorna and the riff-raff that was filling the mountains was himself and White Bull, Volney thought sadly.

  Lorna’s horse climbed to the shelf where Volney waited. Her eyes searched for her Indian friend. She spied Volney sitting in the shadows on his little dun and tried to hide the pleasure she felt at seeing her old friend.

  “You hiding, Volney?”

  Volney’s whispery laugh sounded as part of the wind. “Yo’re aslippin’, gal. Ya ’bout got yoreself cornered by that sidewinder.”

  “Ha!” Lorna snorted. “He couldn’t catch me if I was walking on my hands. Besides, all I had to do was whistle and Gray Wolf would have kicked the stuffing out of him.” She patted the big gray on the neck. “Where’s White Bull?”

  “Rode out when he saw ya was outta the fix ya got yoreself in.”

  “I wasn’t in a fix,” Lorna protested. “Why’d he ride out?”

  “He don’t tell me nothin’, no more’n you do.” Volney slipped his skinning knife out of its sheath, and tipped his head to the north. “He just said, ‘tell Singing Woman my ears are sad.’ ”

  “I’ve not felt much like singing lately. Besides, he’s been up north. He’d not know if I sang or not,” Lorna said, her face inscrutable, with a look of inner concentration. She watched her oldest and dearest friend dig a plug from the depths of one of the cavernous pockets of his tunic and busy himself trimming off a substantial chaw. He was waiting. He knew her so well.