Montana Bride (9 page)

Karl knew better than to ask. He was very much afraid there was nothing about him that caused Hetty’s heart to take an extra beat.

He caressed her cold hand. “I’m looking forward to getting to know you, Hetty.” He opened her clutched fingers one by one as he continued, “To unfolding the petals of a beautiful blossom one by one, until I know everything there is to know about you.”

She laughed nervously. “There’s no need to court me, Karl. I’m already your wife.”

“Precisely,” he said. “I plan to keep my vows, too, Hetty. To honor you. And to cherish you.”

Her eyes were focused on his mouth. He wondered if it was his mouth, or the words coming out of his mouth, that she found so entrancing. He leaned down, closing the distance between them.

He heard her gasp as their lips met and waited for her to pull away. But she didn’t. He was afraid to breathe, afraid he would break the spell.

Her lips pressed back against his, and her breathing became erratic. Her body began to tremble.

He wanted to take her in his arms and hold her and promise her everything would be all right. That he would love her and take care of her and their children for the rest of their lives.

Abruptly, she ended the kiss and stared into his eyes, looking unhappy and confused.

He wanted to say something to comfort her, but he had no idea what she wanted or needed or expected to hear.

She freed herself from his grasp and said, “I’ve got to make sure the children get fed.” Then she turned and hurried back toward the fire.

Karl stayed where he was. He’d never imagined that being married, and becoming an instant stepfather, would be so full of complications. He wished he knew more about Hetty’s life before he’d met her. The letters she’d written, filled with wit and humor, had carefully concealed the dire life she and her children must have been leading.

Karl was filled with curiosity about his new family. And with concern that he would never be able to win his wife’s love.

Patience. Persistence. Karl had both qualities. It looked like he was going to need them. He wanted Hetty willing when he finally made her his wife. He wanted her as eager to consummate their marriage as he was. He wanted their joining to be joyful and exciting and immensely pleasurable.

He wanted the moon and the stars.

Karl shook his head as he laughed at himself. It never hurt to reach for what you wanted. Sometimes, a lot of the time, if you tried hard enough, you got it. Karl wasn’t sure how he was going to manage it, but somehow, he was going to make his wife fall in love with him.

“What is this one called, Karl?” Grace asked, holding up a yellowed leaf she’d plucked from a stalk growing near the trail.

“You’re never gonna stump him, Grace,” Griffin said in disgust. “He’s probably been making up names for all these plants, anyway. How would we know any different?”

“You can give up if you want, Griffin,” Grace said, skipping along beside Karl’s horse as he examined the two-inch-wide, heart-shaped, coarsely-toothed leaf she’d handed up to him. “But I plan to win the prize.”

“We don’t even know what the prize is,” Griffin scoffed. “Or if there even is a prize. He’s probably making that up, too.”

Hetty stopped her own search for a leaf long enough to say, “You can’t win if you won’t play, Griffin.”

“It’s getting hard to find anything Karl hasn’t already identified,” he grumbled.

Karl wondered if Griffin realized what he’d admitted by that statement. Even if the boy wouldn’t play, he’d been watching and learning. Bao had suggested the game one morning two weeks ago, and Karl had gone along with it. The children would present Karl with leaves which he had to identify. Whoever stumped him would win a prize. Dennis had promised to provide the prize, confident that it wouldn’t be necessary, since Karl was an exceptional botanist. And, indeed, Karl hadn’t yet been baffled by anything he’d been shown.

“This is
Heuchera cylindrica,
” he told Grace.

“
Heuchera cylindrica,
” Grace repeated.

Griffin snorted. “Which is a fancy name for what?”

“The common name for this plant is alumroot,” Karl said, handing the leaf back to Grace.

“What is it used for, Karl?” Grace asked.

“The Flatheads chew it to relieve stomach cramps.”

“I’ll just bet they do,” Griffin muttered.

“Stomach cramps,” Grace said as she studied the leaf.

Griffin made a face. “You don’t have to repeat everything he says like it was handed down from on high.”

“I want to learn,” Grace said. “Don’t you?”

“Why would I want to know that gumweed is a remedy for poison ivy, when I don’t even know what poison ivy looks like? Or that pipsissewa tea breaks a fever? I ain’t gonna be no doctor.”

The boy might not want to learn, Karl thought with an inward smile, but his words proved he was absorbing a great deal of information.

“It’s fun to know the way all these plants can be used,” Grace argued.

“I’m gonna try that kinnikinnick for sure,” Griffin said with a grin. “Soon as I can find some tobacco to mix it with.”

Grace grimaced and shook her head, then loped off to look for another leaf.

Trust the boy to remember a plant that the Indians mixed with tobacco to make it taste less strong when smoked, Karl thought. He was amused, rather than upset, because the chances of Griffin encountering wild tobacco in the Bitterroot Valley to mix with kinnikinnick were slim to none.

“I’ve got one!” Hetty announced triumphantly, running up to Karl.

Despite his supposed disinterest, Griffin asked, “Are you sure it’s a new one?”

Finding something Karl hadn’t already identified was getting harder and harder the closer they got to their destination, but even Karl was surprised that no one had yet found a plant he didn’t know. He’d studied hard, but he hadn’t realized just how well he knew the plant life in the Montana Territory.

Karl took the withered leaf from her and examined it carefully. At last he said, “You win the prize, Hetty.”

“I do?”

“She does?” Grace said, stopping in her tracks, her face crestfallen.

“We finally found one you don’t know?” Griffin said with a combination of disbelief and satisfaction.

“Oh, I know this one, all right,” Karl said.

“Then why does Mom win?” Grace demanded.

“Because this plant proves we’re near the end of our journey.” Karl stopped his mount and stepped down to share Hetty’s discovery with the two children, who’d crossed to stand beside her, anxious to learn what was so special about the rotted brown leaf he held in his hand. He perused it carefully, front and back.

“What is it, Karl?” Hetty asked.

Karl knew Hetty had been as avid in her search for leaves as the two children, and she looked giddy at the prospect of winning the contest. Her delight in the game had given her face a glow each morning and put stars of excitement in her blue eyes throughout each day. Karl had been enchanted. Or maybe bewitched. He was sorry to see the game come to an end.

Dennis rode up and asked, “Why the powwow?”

“Mom won the prize,” Grace announced, disappointment in her voice.

Dennis dismounted and joined the group. “Don’t tell me someone’s found a leaf you can’t identify, Karl.”

“Then I won’t,” Karl said with a grin.

“What have you got there?” Dennis asked.

“A sign that our journey’s nearing its end,” Karl replied.

“I know what it is!” Griffin announced.

“You do not,” Grace said, confronting him, hands on hips. “How could you?”

“I do, too! Because of what Karl said. It’s a bitterroot leaf, isn’t it, Karl?” Griffin said triumphantly.

Karl held out the dried-out, one-inch leaf, which had once been fleshy, but which had withered away and fallen off the plant in early June when the bitterroot flower appeared. “Yes, it is.”

Griffin smirked at Grace and said, “Told you so!”

“What’s the prize, Karl?” Grace asked.

“You’ll have to ask Dennis,” Karl replied.

“I didn’t think I’d have to provide a prize,” Dennis said, chagrined. “Let me think a minute. Oh, by the way, who won?”

“I did,” Hetty said, smiling broadly. She turned to Karl and said, “It’s incredible how knowledgeable you are, Karl. How on earth did you learn all this? It seems you know every plant, flower, bush, and tree in the Montana Territory.”

Karl felt himself flushing at the compliment. “It’s simple, really. I studied.”

“But it’s
not
simple,” Hetty replied. “More than once I’ve brought you a leaf that looked nothing like anything I’d seen before, but it turned out to be something you’d already identified.”

“Leaves of the same plant can come in a lot of shapes and sizes,” Karl said.

“I can’t imagine how you remember it all,” Hetty said, admiration plain in her voice.

“It seems to me like a pretty big waste of a perfectly good brain,” Dennis interjected. “Why bother remembering so much useless information?”

“It’s not useless,” Karl said, stung by his friend’s surprising criticism.

Dennis made a disparaging face. “It’s not? Give me one good way you can use it.”

Karl opened his mouth to defend himself, but Hetty beat him to it.

“You must not have been listening very closely, Dennis. Karl could feed us with his knowledge if we were hungry. He could treat us with his knowledge if we were sick. He knows which trees are best for building or burning. He knows which bushes will bear sweet fruit and which will bring forth the most beautiful flowers. And he knows which plants are harmful and should be avoided.”

Karl was astonished to hear Hetty make the same argument he’d made so many times to his elder brother, who’d disdained the time Karl had spent learning about plants.

Unfortunately, Dennis had been present for too many of those arguments, and he responded exactly as Jonas so often had.

“Only a savage still uses leaves and roots for medicine. We don’t need those native remedies,” Dennis said snidely. “We have better, more effective ones. And we can grow wheat and corn to feed ourselves. We don’t need to eat the damned bitter root of some flower.”

Karl hadn’t realized until this moment that Dennis shared Jonas’s feelings about his work. It was shocking to hear him speak so rudely and crudely about Karl’s study of plants and to dismiss his life’s work so completely. He knew better than to argue. He’d never changed Jonas’s mind. He wasn’t likely to change Dennis’s, either.

But it seemed Hetty wasn’t done. “Maybe back East this sort of information isn’t important,” she said heatedly. “But you seem to forget we’re heading into a wilderness where we have to expect the unexpected. Those savages you’re condemning have managed to survive in this wilderness a very long time. So I don’t see how anyone could call Karl’s amazing knowledge about the plants that grow in the Montana Territory
useless.
”

Dennis clapped, grinned at Karl, and said, “Bravo! I haven’t heard such an impassioned defense of your work since the last time you argued with Jonas.”

“I mean it!” Hetty said.

“I’m sure you do, sweetheart, but—”

“I’m not your sweetheart!” Hetty snapped, cutting him off. “And I’ll thank you not to make fun of my husband.”

Dennis looked thunderstruck by the attack. He shot a look at Karl that said,
What’s going on? Where’s that sweet, shy bride you married?

Karl wasn’t quite sure himself. But he felt his heart skip a beat when he looked into Hetty’s admiring blue eyes.

She turned to Dennis and said, “When you’re considering what to give me for a prize, Dennis, be sure it’s something I can split three ways.” She put an arm around Grace’s waist, then tousled Griffin’s eternally shaggy hair. “We all three deserve to share in the reward.”

Griffin’s chin dropped, and he murmured, “I don’t.”

“Of course you do!” Hetty said.

Griffin shook his head. “I didn’t play, so I don’t deserve to win. And I ain’t taking charity.”

“I’m
not
taking charity,” Hetty corrected softly. “And it isn’t charity when you earn it.”

Karl could see the boy was only a moment from bolting. He put a hand on Griffin’s shoulder to keep him in place. “Tell me, Griffin, what is
Populus balsamifera
?”

For a moment, the boy didn’t answer, and Karl wondered if he’d made a mistake about how closely Griffin had been listening for the past two weeks. Then the boy’s head came up, and he said almost defiantly, “That’s the Latin name for cottonwood.”

“How do the Indians use it?” Karl asked.

“They make a poultice of the leaves for bruises and sores and boils.”

“Anything else?”

“Yeah. They make tea from the bark for whooping cough.”

“Anything else?”

Griffin’s eyes brightened. “They mix the buds in springtime with blood to make black paint that won’t wear off.”

“Anything else?” Karl repeated.

Griffin glanced at Dennis, then said, “Yeah. Cottonwood sap is sweet to eat, and so is the inner bark. And you can feed cottonwood twigs and bark to horses, ’cause they like it.”

“Is that all?” Karl asked.

Griffin shot Dennis a cheeky look. “Cottonwood makes a good fire. It doesn’t crackle, and it gives off a clean smoke.”

“You were playing, Griffin, whether you knew it or not,” Karl said. “You absolutely deserve a share of the prize.”

Griffin jerked himself free and mumbled, “If you say so.”

“I’m convinced,” Dennis said. He turned to his saddlebags, reached inside, and came out with a leather pouch. He opened it and handed a long, thin strip of black licorice to Hetty and then to Grace. Finally, he offered one to Griffin, whose hands were stuck in his pockets. “Take it, kid. You earned it.”

Griffin glanced toward Hetty, who nodded, then to Karl, who nodded and smiled encouragement. Finally, he looked at Grace and said, “You can have my share.”

“I couldn’t remember half what you did about cottonwoods,” Grace said. “Take it, Griffin.”

Karl could tell the boy didn’t trust Dennis not to snatch the prize back at the last moment. He finally reached out, grabbed the licorice strip, and ran pell-mell toward the front of the wagon. Grace shot an anxious look at Hetty and hurried after him.

“What the hell’s wrong with that boy?” Dennis asked.

“Watch your language,” Karl said.

“What the hell’s wrong with
you
?” Dennis replied irritably. “You never minded my language before.”

“It’s not just you and me anymore. I have a wife and kids to think about.”

Dennis snorted and muttered, “Son of a bitch.” Then he held up his hands in surrender. “You win. I’ll watch my language.”

Karl met Hetty’s gaze and saw approval there. His throat constricted with emotion. He shouldn’t care what she thought. Henrietta Wentworth Templeton Norwood was a liar.