Paint the Wind

  Hart raised his eyes from the girl to his brother and spoke.

  "If we can't warm her faster than this, she doesn't have a chance."

  Chance looked sunk in thought for a minute, then stood up suddenly and started to undo his belt.

  "Take your clothes off, bro," he said firmly, and Hart wondered if his brother had gone loco.

  "I said take your clothes off, Hart!" Chance repeated. "Don't you remember what Pa told us about the Cheyenne and frostbite? We're gonna warm her between the two of us."

  The Indians on the northern plains used the trick; two big male bodies can produce a lot of heat in a bed if they've a mind to.

  "It seems wrong to do that, Chance. She's so defenseless."

  Chance just smiled indulgently at his brother's sensibilities, and stepping out of his trousers, tugged off his shirt.

  "Come on, bro—if we can't save her, she'll never know what happened. If we do save her, she may be grateful enough to forgive us."

  After a moment, Hart nodded, and pulled his own shirt over his head. He had a hard time taking his eyes off the small naked body that looked lost in the center of the bed. Both McAllisters crowded under the covers, on either side of Fancy, and the homemade bed sagged nearly to the floor beneath their combined weight. Fancy was cold as crystal and almost as fragile; Chance put his arms around her gently, as if it were the most ordinary of acts, and his brother followed suit.

  Hart felt the silken cold of Fancy's skin as he laid one big arm carefully across her chest to warm and shield her. He thought he could feel a tiny stirring as he did so, and wondered if she would suddenly awake and finding herself between them, be angry or frightened. "What if she dies, Chance?" he said.

  "She might as well have been dead already out there on the trail like that... we can't do her anything but good, bro."

  The boys tried to think what to talk about, but nothing seemed appropriate, so each was left to his own thoughts.

  "Surely would like to feel free to touch her," Chance said once, but Hart was thinking how protective she made him feel, lying there between them; not dividing, exactly, more like connecting.

  "I feel like she needs us," he said quietly.

  Chance shook his head, amused, as he often was by his brother's turn of mind. "The Lakota say if you save someone from dying, you take responsibility for their lives. Almost like that person belongs to you."

  "Then I guess she'll belong to both of us," Hart said, wondering if such a thing could be. Wondering if he would ever forget the feel of her in his arms... the soft satin skin, the tender swell of breast and hip, the strangely seductive perfection. He drifted off to sleep, still wondering, and was surprised when he awoke to find Chance standing near the bed.

  "She's warmed now, Hart. Maybe you'd best let her be in case she wakes up. We don't want to go scaring her to death, after all the trouble we've taken to save her." Chance chuckled and Hart scrambled out from under the covers. He thought he'd heard an odd note in his brother's voice, just in that moment, and wondered if it might be jealousy. Surely no. Hart put the alien thought from his mind and pulled on his clothes as rapidly as he could.

  Later, he had much occasion to think about that day when it all began. There was Fancy, lying between them; she needing help and them providing it. In a way, that's how it always stayed for the three of them, he thought. Fancy wedged in between, creating a special kind of love and a special kind of loneliness.

  Chapter 21

  Fancy forced her mind to break the surface of the dark that engulfed her. Like a swimmer pressing upward, she fought a pressured roaring in her ears, as the sunlight drew her.

  "She's waking up," Chance whispered, and Hart put the cook-pot back on the hearth hook and moved hastily to the bed.

  "Atticus?" she murmured, confused by the cold light filtering through the small window above her and by the two tall strangers who stood beside the bed.

  Atticus was dead. She knew that, somewhere inside her. Everyone she loved was dead. Fancy blinked hard to focus in an alien world.

  The dark-haired stranger sat down beside her on the bed; he was so handsome, she thought she must still be dreaming, but he smiled and spoke and the scent of his body close to hers let her know he was real.

  "You've been sick," he said. "My brother and I found you in a drift on the trail. Mightn't have at all if it hadn't been for that banjo of yours sticking up and the red of your scarf."

  Fancy shifted her gaze to the large auburn-haired man who stood nearby. He had a kindly, gentle face at odds with his powerful physique; his blue eyes were full of concern.

  "Atticus is dead," she repeated softly as two shiny tears welled up and trickled down her cheeks. The two men looked at each other, wondering if her brush with death had turned the girl's mind, but she gathered herself and asked, "Who are you?"

  The dark one smiled with relief. "McAllister. I'm Chance, he's my brother, Hart. We and a fellow named McBain prospect these mountains, but McBain's gone off somewhere 'til spring. You're in the Mosquito Range, near Oro City—in our cabin."

  "How long?"

  "Three days," Hart answered. He thought she had the most exquisite voice he'd ever heard. "Who's Atticus?"

  Fancy looked up sharply. "My friend. We were traveling together when the blizzard hit. He was old... I think his heart just gave out." It was easy to see she'd loved Atticus; she could barely manage to speak his name. Hart wondered why she would have been traveling the mountains with an old man for a friend.

  "What's your name?" he ventured.

  "Fancy. Fancy Deverell. I guess I should thank you for saving me. I remember falling... it didn't seem possible anyone would ever find me. I was so damn mad at God."

  She saw the two men glance at each other and saw the confusion in their expressions, but she was too weak to say anything more, so she closed her eyes and scrunched down into the covers again, and reveling in the blessed warmth, let herself drift off to sleep.

  After a week or so, Fancy was well enough to participate in life again. The boys were happy to have her to themselves and hoped Bandana would take his time getting back from wherever he'd gone.

  She was an endless revelation; there was joy in her, they found, and terror, way down deep. Joy in being alive, joy in sharing, the kind of joy that makes you live the most you can today, in case tomorrow never comes. Fancy was like someone reborn who hadn't expected a resurrection, but she was more than a little fey, and mourned hard for Atticus, talking about him in endless detail. Death stalked her, she said wistfully, and all those she loved.

  There was little to do in the cabin until the thaw, so each man made Fancy the subject of his own study. She was unlike the virtuous wives and mothers, the Sunday-school teachers, whores, or saloon girls who had made up their entire experience of the fairer sex.

  Fancy knew right from wrong, but didn't always feel bound by that and she didn't care a fig for convention. She could be hurt as a child by the most unlikely things, and in other ways was strong-minded and more full of opinions than a woman had any business being. She wasn't contrary, Hart said, just willful and wary because she'd been hurt by life. She had a fierce temper, was stoic as a Sioux and uncomplaining—yet she could play the Grand Duchess when it was least expected, and make it clear she demanded to be treated as a lady. She took pains to tell them about her independence; she could take care of herself just fine, she said repeatedly. Maybe she could, Hart thought, but it looked to him like she could use some love to go along with the independence, for she lapped up kindness like a kitten with a saucer of milk and underneath the armor of competency she'd constructed, he thought he glimpsed a soft and frightened girl.

  "With that stubborn streak and all those opinions she's got, I'll be damned if I can imagine how any man will ever break her to harness," Chance said one night, after Fancy had fallen asleep.

  Hart smiled at his brother in the dark. "But if she decided to ride with you awhile, you sure would count yourself the luckiest man alive
, wouldn't you?" he answered him.

  They all laughed together, planned the future together. Fancy had as much an obsession about striking it rich as Chance did. They would hit the gold fields when the thaw came, they told each other, and make their fortunes. When that happened, Hart would go East to study at a real art college, then he'd head into Indian territory to paint the last true natives of the West before encroaching civilization destroyed the exotic world his father had made live in his dreams; Chance would build the fanciest house in Denver. Fancy would go on the stage and tour the European capitals and marry a man who would lay the world at her feet.

  She sang for them every night, or recited from the classics Hart loved so well. He said she had a voice that would put the angels to shame and sometimes she would play a tune from the tiny music box she carried with her and sing to its accompaniment. She'd carried this keepsake from the past with her every day of her life, since leaving home behind. The small blue box with its gilded cherubs played a wistful melody, tinkly as a tiny harp. Fancy would sing along with its haunting sound and the brothers would exchange glances and swell with longing for her. But since neither was free to court her under the other's gaze, they simply longed in silence.

  By the time Bandana stomped his way back into the cabin in January, Fancy, Chance, and Hart were friends.

  Chapter 22

  "I've got a favor to ask of you," Fancy said one night after supper; all three men looked up, interested. The cabin seemed like home since she'd arrived, she'd tidied it and made curtains for the window from scraps of cloth. No one had said as much to the others, but Fancy's presence had woven them into a family.

  "Anything short of catching moonbeams, little lady, and I expect we'll give it a try for you." Bandana had taken to Fancy from the first; her sassiness and vulnerability attracted him in equal measure.

  "I need to bury Atticus."

  Bandana pursed his lips, understanding what must have occasioned the notion. The thaw had started to send its first sparkly rivulets down the gorge. The body would have been preserved by the constant snow until now, but once the snow melted...

  "You real certain you want to put yourself through that, Fance?" he asked her, getting up from where he'd been strumming idly on his banjo. He walked to where she sat on the side of the swayback bed.

  "I have to know he's safe."

  "There's no telling what's left to be found, Fancy, or how to go about looking," Hart said. He thought the note in her voice when she spoke of Atticus could have torn the heart from a stone.

  "I'll find him," she answered, and no one argued.

  The following morning they all equipped themselves as best they could and picked their way out along the precarious and melting trail—they found him where she said he'd be.

  The snow had kept away wild animals and delayed corruption, but the thaw had begun its decimating work. Hart moved his body in between Fancy and Atticus to spare her the worst of the sight, but she pushed past him angrily; she felt a need for communion of suffering with Atticus, for she had failed him at the end.

  Bandana reached over and pried loose her fingers from each other, then took one little hand in his own; Fancy clung so tightly, she hurt his knuckles, but he said nothing.

  The ground was too hard to dig and there was no lumber for a coffin, so the men gathered stones and boulders and piled them into a mounded cairn. Fancy watched -them as they worked; she felt riveted to the spot, unable to move, barely able to breathe. She felt the rocks choke off her own air, lie heavy on her own limbs. No! Atticus was courageous... he would never fear the darkness. And he was far from here by now, borne home like the stormbird...

  Fancy steadied herself against memory. She stepped forward, took a deep breath, and spoke her eulogy.

  "You were my friend, Atticus. You were strong and full of wisdom. Now I'll never be scared of dying, because when my time comes, I know you'll just come for me like you did that awful night at Beau Rivage, and you'll carry me off in your strong arms, and..." Her voice faltered and she had to stop a moment to control it.

  "We'll go home together."

  Hart wanted to reach out for her, but Fancy suddenly leaned forward and picked up two handfuls of snow from the grave in her clenched fists. The onlookers thought she would toss them onto the burial mound, as if they were grave dust, but instead, in some strange ritual, she tilted back her head and rubbed the snow all over her hair and face and hands... all three men turned their faces away from the anguished gesture.

  No one trusted himself to speak, so Bandana stepped forward and took his place at Fancy's side.

  "We shall gather at the river..." he began in his rich baritone. Hart and Chance joined in the hymn.

  Fancy listened to the three male voices echo down the crystal canyon. Oh, my dear Atticus, I miss you so, she thought.

  The hymn ended, the last notes seemed to linger for a moment, then faded. Fancy felt Bandana's arm go around her shoulders and unresisting, she let him guide her back along the trail.

  Chapter 23

  "You give me that shovel this minute, Hart McAllister," Fancy demanded. "Just because you're bigger than I am doesn't mean I can't work as hard as you!" Gold fever had propelled them all from the confines of the cabin into the spring day.

  McBain watched Hart's confusion and tried hard not to laugh. Fancy was doing her damnedest to pull her own oar and the boys were tripping all over themselves to treat her like a lady.

  "Hold on there, Fancy," Hart said with injured pride. "Digging holes in the ground is just not work for a gal. Especially not a little bitty one like you. Now you just leave the shoveling to me and Chance and Bandana."

  Fancy's mouth hardened into a line, her eyes narrowed in mute determination. There was no way she could explain how important it was to her to be treated as an equal. They would happily have left her in the cabin to cook and to clean, underestimating her ambition and her temperament. She aimed a defiant look in Hart's direction and went right on digging.

  Embarrassed at being ignored, Hart grabbed Fancy's wrist where it held the shovel, without thinking through what he intended to do next. He never got a chance to find out, for Fancy lit into the huge man like a wild thing. If he hadn't been twice her size and young enough to have good reflexes, she might have brained him with the shovel.

  Shocked into action by the unexpected attack, Hart held her wriggling like a trapped wildcat at the end of his long arms.

  "Damn you, Hart McAllister! Don't you ever give me orders like that again, do you hear me? Don't you ever treat me like a child or I'll be out of here so fast, it'll make your head spin! I decide what I'll do, not you or anybody else, do you understand? This gold is every bit as important to me as it is to you. Maybe more!" ,

  Her reaction was so disproportionate to what had happened, Hart could see he'd hit a nerve by his well-meaning blunder. So, not knowing what else to do, he held on doggedly to Fancy's arms until, still fuming, she ran out of steam and he let her go. Fancy rubbed her arms where he'd held her, and gave Hart a look that would have cut through steel plate. Wordlessly, she picked up the shovel again and commenced to dig.

  "That's a real headstrong little filly," pronounced Bandana, moving in close to Hart's side. "You'd best watch your step with her, young feller."

  Hart leaned hard on his shovel, a deep furrow between his thick chestnut brows.

  "Did you see that look in her eye while I held her out there in front of me, Bandana? Defiant and terrified all at once? I swear I saw that same expression on a fox with his leg caught in a steel trap, once. There's some powerful big terror inside that little body. I saw it plain as day."

  Bandana heard the protective note in Hart's voice and wondered where it would lead.

  Hart stretched his eyes along the border of dusk-grayed rocks and scrub pine; the mountain always took on the color of rusted iron after sunset. The land, so lush by day, looked mean-spirited at night; penurious and harsh. He'd lied to Chance and Bandana, said he was checki
ng for a pickax he might have left at the mine site, but he was looking for Fancy. She had the damnedest habit of wandering out alone late in the day and not returning until dark. When he'd chided her, she'd related her tale of living rough on the road with Atticus, as if that automatically ensured her safe passage. But Hart knew experience didn't always equal safety in the wilderness.

  Her figure materialized on the hillside far ahead, small and insignificant in the dim silver light. His heart beat faster and he told himself it was relief.

  "You shouldn't be out here, babe!" he shouted, startling her. He'd taken to calling her that because it made him feel closer to her, as if she belonged to him. "It'll be full dark before we get back."

  "I can take care of myself, Hart. Haven't I told you that a thousand times?" Fancy could be real snappish when she felt criticized, even about some little thing that was unimportant; still, Hart liked to hear her say his name.

  "I wasn't trying to pick a fight with you, Fancy," he said, reining up alongside her. "It's just that it's near dark and there're a lot of men in these hills haven't seen a woman in longer than they can remember, never mind one as pretty as you. You could get hurt."

  "Horse feathers," she sniffed, but he could tell she was mollified by his saying she was pretty.

  "You're not my daddy, Hart McAllister," she said, trying to sound stern, but there was no rancor at all in her voice. She reached up toward him, expecting to be hauled up behind him on the horse, and he obliged. Once there, she snuggled down in back of him and put her arms affectionately around his waist, so he could tell she wasn't mad, just teasing.

  "If I were your daddy, I'd teach you more sense than to wander around out here and invite trouble," he said as he nudged the horse into motion. The warmth of her body spread through him like fine brandy.

  "What else would you teach me?"