Free Heart of the West by Penelope Williamson Page A

her shoulder at Clementine and Gus. "This here is what us folk in the freighting business call eee-vaporation."
    "That's what decent folk would call stealing," Gus said.
    "Guess that means you won't be wantin' any, then, you bein' so temp'rate and of the decent sort. And Mrs. McQueen, bein' such a la-di-da lady and the daughter of a preacher an' all—she sure ain't gonna want to stain her saintly lips with the devil's brew."
    Annie cast Clementine one of her sly looks. "Yup, a real starched-up wife you got yerself there, Gus McQueen." The whiskey had reached the cup brim and was now overflowing. "Just as well," she said, as she plugged the hole with a broken matchstick and pounded the hoop back into place, "the laws of nature only allowin' for so much eee-vaporation."
    She took a long, deep swallow. She shuddered dramatically and smacked her lips together with the pleasure of it. Gus watched her antics with a sour mouth, as if he wanted to say something more and only the distaste of the words was stopping him. In that moment Clementine thought he did seem all lassoed up tight in his own righteousness. Not at all the man with the laughing eyes who had come flying into her life on a big-wheeled ordinary.
    There was a tetchiness now to the silence that came over the camp. "I think I would like some of that coffee after all," Clementine said for the sake of making noise. She hadn't yet acquired a taste for the brew that westerners insisted had to be thick enough to float a horseshoe.
    Gus's hand fell on her shoulder, holding her down. "I'll get it."
    She watched him pour from the giant blackened pot. As he put the cup into her hands, their fingers brushed and she felt a soothing warmth from the coffee and from touching him. She gave him one of her rare smiles. "Thank you, Mr. McQueen."
    "You could try putting your tongue around my given name, Clementine."
    The smile faded. "I will. I promise. Just give me a little more time."
    He said nothing. But he picked up a stick and punched it deep into the fire. She didn't understand this stubbornness in herself. She yearned for the intimacy of his touch, yet she couldn't bring herself to the intimacy of calling him by his given name. It was as if it was a way of keeping one small part of her newfound woman's self to herself and apart from him for a while longer.
    She turned the cup around in her hands, staring into the coffee, dark and oily as ink. Her father's pulpit voice echoed in her head: "Wives submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord." All of her life she had spent in battle with her father; she didn't want to fight her husband as well, and yet she was doing it. Already.
    "The first night at our place, that's when I'm going to make you mine," Gus had said. They were the words of a man planning to take possession. Soon they would be at his ranch, and he would take from her body the sort of pleasure the chippies sold. To think about it made her ache deep inside as she had one rainy day when she'd sneaked outside and taken off her shoes and stockings to play barefoot in the garden. When she had stood in mud that was as soft and slippery as buttered silk and squeezed her toes and felt the wet mud ooze up between them, and the pleasure of it had pierced her so that she had to set her teeth. Not to stop herself from laughing but to stop a scream.
    She stole a glance at this man, her husband. He sat with his forearms braced on his thighs, staring into the fire. She wondered if he too thought of that first night. The first night of the rest of her life in the RainDance country, and the first night that he would make her his.
    She sighed silently, deep within herself, and drew her steamer cloak tighter around her throat. The air had gone still and heavy, and there was an odd smell to it, like cold metal.
    A wet drop struck her wrist; another glanced off her cheek. Sparkling pinwheels fell into the flames with a gentle hiss. She flung her head back, staring into a sky of