Free The Quantro Story by Chris Scott Wilson Page B

it was dancing as it threaded between the wagons, heading west. Janey stood in the doorway of her restaurant, one hand on the doorjamb, her knees trembling slightly beneath her petticoats. She gazed at the wide span of his shoulders with despair. Her stomach muscles knotted and she felt as if his leaving was draining all of her strength, her heart aching, her chest full of nothing but emptiness.
    Two hundred yards from where she stood Quantro turned in his saddle and looked back. There was no smile on his face and she could not be sure of his expression at that distance, but he raised a hand in a brief gesture of farewell. As she waved back, the full pressure of the salt tears came up behind her eyes and she let it go. The emotion brought back the memories of the night before, and she ignored the streams that coursed down her cheeks. Her lips tasted their saltiness and her heart, too, tasted their sadness.
    It had been a night to remember.
    The vision of her own soft white skin covered by his hard and tanned body. His lean frame stretched across her bed, knowing hands exploring the secret places of her body, the urgent need for release, and the blistering heat of it. After the first insistent passion they had taken their time, giving love and taking love through the long hours of the night, until the grey sky crept into the window, and they acknowledged the forerunner of the dawn.
    When she had cooked his breakfast, each time she turned to look at him, she had found him watching her, his blue eyes expressionless. She wondered at the thoughts that crossed his mind. She knew only too well the thoughts that crossed her own.
    Quantro had enjoyed the sight of her tousled black hair, carelessly pinned, and her soft dewy eyes, fresh from sleep. He appreciated the way she moved, economically and yet with the hint of a flourish, perhaps for his benefit. She was almost too much of a woman to be real. She had everything he wanted, the ability to have love and share it with him. But for the one thing that would drive him away from her.
    Revenge.
    He wanted to stay, to turn the buckskin around and come back and enjoy for ever the good food she would serve him. He wanted to stir in the night and feel her soft warm flesh as she lay beside him. He wanted to savor the scent of her each time he was near, to enjoy the sheer womanliness of her. If he turned back now the days would be warm and pleasant and they would move together through life building a private place of their own.
    But each time he contemplated these things, the picture of the cruel destruction, the inhuman torture and wanton lechery that he had witnessed in his parents’ house came back to haunt him. Two faces, whose names he knew, two men, were yet to be called to account for their doings.
    There would be no peace for him until he had done what he had to do.
    When she asked the question, as he knew she would, he had not been able to answer her, and she had read her own reply in his clear eyes. She did not understand what, but she understood there was something that drove him, and all she could do was watch in silence as he saddled the buckskin stallion and swung up on to its back. He had leant down and gently touched her cheek, then he clucked his tongue to the horse and turned away.
    Maybe, she thought, when he had been where he had to go he would return.
    Her parting gift was a pack of supplies. She hoped that as he ate, somewhere out on the prairie, he would remember what had passed between them and feel the need to come back.
    She would wait.
    ***
    He rode continuously through the day, stopping only briefly to water the stallion at noon, and to sit in the shade of a Pecan tree. In the saddle, his eyes kept a constant watch on the land and occasionally he turned to familiarize himself with the scenery behind him, just in case he would want to ride back this way again. He knew you could often ride the same trail in the opposite direction and not recognize the terrain at