Evan Hunter - The Chisholms - A novel of the journey West

When she’d judged that fifteen minutes had passed — counting her own heartbeats sixty to the minute, nine hundred of them all told, nearly beginning to panic once when she lost the count and couldn’t remember for the briefest tick of time whether the heartbeat of that instant signaled three hundred and four or two hundred and four, settling on the higher figure in her eagerness for the time to pass swiftly — when she’d counted at last to nine hundred, she raised herself on one elbow and glanced from one huddled shape to another in the light of the blazing fire. Her father was asleep, sure enough, and her mother and her brother Will, too, who snored almost as loud as her father did. On the other side of the fire were Gideon and Bobbo — his mouth wide open to catch any passing varmint — both of them asleep. And there lay Annabel, also asleep — We have a little sister, and she hath no breasts: What shall we do for our sister in the day when she shall be spoken for? — but some ten feet around the circumference of the circle, where Lester should have been, there were only his ground cloth and blanket.

Her heart lurched.

Rising, remembering to take her blanket with her, she ran barefooted toward a small stand of birch near where the mules and horses were picketed. She glanced back over her shoulder once before entering the woods. No one was stirring. She was certain Lester would be here waiting for her, so certain that she almost called his name. But the woods were empty, moonlight shone on pale gaunt trunks, and in the brush an insect clicked and then fell silent. She could hear the mules and horses in the field beyond. A log hissed and spat on the fire and then all was still again.

His arm came out of the darkness, circling her waist from behind. He pulled her in against him, and she felt immediately the stiffness of him inside his trousers and against her buttocks. Still behind her, he reached up with both hands now and clutched her breasts, and lowered the petticoat straps to free them. Holding them naked in his cupped hands, he bent his head to kiss the side of her neck. She was trembling violently. She turned to him and put both arms around him and squeezed him fiercely, as though she might stop the trembling that way. But what she’d earlier felt pressing the curve of her backside was now firm against the mound between her legs, and the hands that a moment before had held her naked breasts were now clutching her buttocks, the fingertips nudging her cleft from behind. She knew she would swoon. He bent slightly and put his left arm behind her knees, and with his right behind her back he lifted her from the ground and carried her through the stand of birch to where the woods became more dense.

It was almost pitch black here in the deeper woods. The fire was too distant even to be seen, and only dappled moonlight filtered through the heavily laced branches of the huge old trees. He carried her to a pale green glade, her head against his shoulder, and then lowered her gently to the ground. The ground was moist; she realized suddenly she had dropped the blanket somewhere back among the birches. She felt the wetness through the thin cotton petticoat, and on the backs of her naked legs when he raised the petticoat above her waist. She did not resist him when he lowered her drawers to her knees, and then eased them past her ankles and removed them entirely and put them on the ground beside her with a curious delicacy, as though he were placing an expensive timepiece on a polished fruitwood dresser top. He had not said a word thus far, and she wondered when he was going to say something, Thou art beautiful, O my love as Tirzah, something, the joints of thy thighs are like jewels, anything at all. But his hands were gently urging open those jewellike thighs, and she realized with a start, but without particular alarm, that he had unbuttoned the fly of his trousers.

“Open,” he said, which she supposed was somewhat poetic, but not quite so flowery as what she’d been expecting. He was pressing against her now, this very moment, trying to place his dove in the clefts of the rock, in the secret places of the stairs, and she felt an uncontrollable urge to giggle. And then, suddenly, there was an implosion of flesh, his and her own, her nether lips clinging resolutely and then receiving him all at once, so that his entrance seemed an unexpected surprise. She opened fully to him, legs apart, petticoat thrown wantonly back, arms flung wide like those of a crucified whore. His hands were under her, his fingers spread upon her buttocks, lifting her to him with each stroke until — learning the motion, discovering that even the slightest tilt against him caused her to quiver below — she cunningly initiated a responding thrust of her own and together they fell into a jagged tempo that was surely the beat of the devil’s own jig, played on a fiddle out of tune.

“Do you love me?” he whispered. “Tell me you love me, darlin girl,” the words rolling off his tongue as easy as Irish whiskey.

She whispered against his ear and into it, cautiously at first though her passion urged otherwise, “I love you.”

“Louder,” he said.

“I love you, yes.”

“Again.”

“I love you,” she said, boldly this time, “I love you, yes I love you,” she said, “oh Jesus,” she said, melting inexorably into her own cleft, climbing each relentless stroke, gliding to the root of him, grinding there, “oh Jesus,” she said, “oh Lester, I love, oh Jesus, oh yes, I love you, I love you.”

In the morning Lester was gone.

And with him Will’s horse.

She thought at first the commotion had to do with someone having seen her and Lester in the woods the night before. When she heard the angry voices, she was sure that her brothers had dragged Lester out from under his blanket and were now going to skin him alive. It was first light; the fire had turned to ashes blowing off fine in a thin wind from the east. She squinted through the veil of ashes to where her brothers were standing near the horses and the mules, and looked for Lester because she thought they’d have him by the throat or the scruff of the neck, but Lester was nowhere in sight. That was when she got the gist of what they were saying.

Lester had run off in the night.

Lester had stolen Will’s raindrop gelding.

“Didn’t trust him from the minute I laid eyes on him,” Hadley said.

“What do you make of these tracks?”

“They ain’t heading west, that’s for Sure.”

“For all his knowing snakes,” Hadley said, and spat on the ground.

“How long you think he’s been gone?”

“No way of telling.”

“Anybody hear anything during the night?”

“Heard some thrashing out there in the woods,” Bobbo said, “but I figured it to be some critter.”

Bonnie Sue got to her feet and smoothed her petticoat. Her sister Annabel was watching her shrewdly, or seemed to be. Had she, too, heard thrashing in the woods, and had she gone to investigate? They’d been out there half the night, Lester holding her in his arms till he was ready again to claim what she’d already declared was his. Now he was gone. And they were calling him a horse thief. Quickly, she dressed.

“Ought to string him up,” Hadley said.

“Got to catch him first, Pa.”

“He knows we’re late, figures we can’t spare no time chasin him.”

“That’s a fine horse he stole.”

“We go after him, we won’t make Independence till Independence Day. I say we forget the bastard.”

“And forget my horse, too? Worth a hundred fifty dollars or more, that horse.”

“Those tracks are plain enough headin north,” Bobbo said.

“To Carthage, more’n likely,” Gideon said. “His mother’s there in Carthage, didn’t he say?”