Buffalo Palace by Terry C. Johnston Read Free Book Online Page A

his belly as she shifted beside him.
    Then, just as she had promised, after that second feral coupling the woman rolled herself away from him, peeled her coat from the jumble of his blankets, and wrapped herself within it before she leaned over him.
    “Mr. Bass,” she whispered, her lips almost against his, her eyes staring right into him. “I ain’t no young woman no more. And I ain’t got a damn prospect one way out here where Heber brought us for to find his dream. So I’m telling you to take what I give you of Edna Mae Grigsby and ride off come morning. I damn well know you’re gonna ’member the smell of me when you’re out there fighting off them Pawnee or any them other nasty Injuns. An’ then maybeso you’ll wanna come riding back here to me, to what you had you a taste of this night.”
    The guilt rose in him like an underground spring. “I …
I
don’t want you getting the wrong idea—”
    “Don’t have me no idea a’tall, Mr. Bass,” she interrupted.“Fact is, you’ll likely not ever be back. But if you’ve got yourself a hankering for a good woman to spend out your days with—just remember I’m here.”
    “Edna.” He said it in such a way that she already knew.
    Apologetically.
    And the woman put her fingers on his lips to silence any more rejection of her. Edna drew her face back from his as he fought to find the words to explain.
    “Then go, Mr. Bass,” she whispered. “I figger we both got what we wanted here tonight. You’re on your way out there for something. And I got what I been needing—needing for the better part of a year since my Heber gone and left me with young’uns to raise and fields to plow.”
    “But you ain’t never cried,” he said. “That’s what—”
    “No I ain’t,” she admitted, her lip stiffening. “But likely I will one of these days soon, Mr. Bass. At first, I only got dead inside when Heber died. It hurt so bad him going that I made myself go all dead inside, like a dried-up autumn leaf. Then I tol’t myself another man be coming along and want the pleasure I could give him for the rest of his days. Didn’t know if’n it’d be you …” She wagged her head as she leaned back. “So be it.”
    The look on her face, the sag in her shoulders—it caused him such pain inside. “I didn’t tend to hurt no one, Edna.”
    “Hush now. Ain’t you caused me the hurt,” she said, brushing her fingers down the side of his face, her eyes pooling, shiny in the inky starlight. “I figger leastways now I can go on and shed myself of these tears.”
    Feeling the first of them spill hot upon his chest, Titus pulled the woman against him, nestling her head in the crook of his neck as she began to sob. He cradled her there as Edna cried after all those months, her body shaking harder than it had when she twice rocked beneath him. Then her sobbing grew quieter, and it seemed she drifted off to sleep there within his embrace.
    Out east on the horizon the sky was graying when he came awake himself, one of his arms gone to sleep, tingling beneath the woman.
    Suddenly he smelled the woodsmoke, rising slightly togaze across the yard at the cabin where he realized a fire had been lit and coffee set to boil.
    “Edna!” he whispered down at her sharply.
    She came awake immediately, rubbing at her eyes and realizing. “I best go,” she said in a small voice, throwing back the covers, slipping out, then carefully tucking them back against his naked body.
    Titus asked, “You … things gonna be all right with you?”
    With a sad smile she leaned close to him again. “I’ll make out just fine.”
    “You’ll make some man a handsome wife again one day real soon.”
    “Thank you, Mr. Bass. Thank you.” She bent over his face, kissed him lightly, then rose to her knee, pulling the long flaps of the wool coat about her bare legs. “You don’t find what you’re looking for out there, you come riding on back here and look for me.”
    He couldn’t help but