she didn't know why he would bother now. At a distance of twenty feet, she watched unabashedly while he prepared himself. She loved the hard, lean contours of his body, and she hadn't grown weary of observing him.
When he was finished, he walked toward her in nothing but the leather piece fastened with rawhide about his waist. He carried a wire snare and a pistol.
'Here.' He held out the other loincloth and waited. She blinked her eyes, but otherwise stood unmoving. 'After a half hour or so I'll get cold. If you're going to help, I suggest you get going.'
'In that?'
Leaving it draped over her shoulder, Kier walked on. ''You can help carry the food back if you have a thing about your breasts.'
'I have no thing about my breasts. They're just private, that's all. Unlike some people I don't go around with my genitals hanging out.' She caught herself doing it again. 'Not that there's anything wrong with them.'
'You seem to have a fascination.'
'That's not true. That is so silly and so male.'
She watched him wade through the rushes without reply and swim toward a teepee-shaped mound of mud and sticks that she knew to be a beaver lodge. He's got to be crazy to swim in that freezing water, she thought. But to show him she could do it, she wanted to go after him. If she was going to be his equal, she had better find a way to go. Almost running, she went to a tree, where she struggled out of her clothes while watching Kier out of the corner of her eye. He disappeared under the water twice, then climbed out on top of the beaver house.
She heard silenced pistol shots in rapid succession, and the heavy thunk of. 45 slugs plowing into the mud and wood. In moments, he was pulling on something, a wire snare she assumed, to haul in a large, flopping brown mass. Two more shots and the animal stopped straggling.
Clad in her bra and loincloth, she deposited her clothes in the backpack, then went to the water's edge and stepped in, grateful that there was no ice crust. She considered that her bra, if wet, would only make her cold after she emerged. She pulled it off and tossed it on the snow. The cold water hit her ankles, then her legs, aching all the way to the bone. She gasped, but forced herself into the water, wondering all the while if the cold might do her in.
She could feel Kier's gaze even though he pretended to be busy with the beaver. As she walked briskly forward, the pond bottom felt like mush under her feet. An icy burn moved up her legs to her thighs, then to her belly. When the water was a little over waist deep, she began to swim. In less than a minute she swam the forty feet to Kier, who hauled her out atop the beaver lodge. The air actually felt warm. She crossed her arms across her chest.
He seemed to send his eyes everywhere but to her body. 'Pull this to shore. Get dressed and wait for me. I'll be right behind,' he said. He handed her the stick, which was still attached to the wire snare. She managed to take it in hand without moving her arms. Obviously, Kier had snared the beaver by driving the animal from its stick house. The noose was still tight around the beaver's neck.
''Okay,'' she said, jumping back in without further comment. 'Oh God, oh God,' she muttered through gritted teeth as she swam back.
The cold held her like a monster in its jaws, gripping and crushing all the way to her innards. It felt as though the chilly water were sucking the life from her, constricting her lungs, narrowing her vision. It frightened her. From her survival training she knew this kind of cold could incapacitate a person in minutes.
Towing the dead animal, she swam in a sidestroke, pulling with her left hand, while grasping the stick in her right. The beaver was heavy and made the going much slower, but she had only gone a few feet before she discovered that she could touch bottom. Getting a purchase with her toes, she pushed ahead quickly. At waist deep, she tried to run, pulling with all her strength. Stepping out onto the land gave Jessie one of the most triumphant feelings she could ever recall. The pleasure of it overcame the pain of the cold-something she would not have thought possible.
She pulled the dead creature to the water's edge and, still exhilarated by her success, watched Kier, who stood waist deep among leafy plants that looked a little like ivy atop the pond. Making herself ignore the cold, she reentered the water to join him. In a few seconds, she was at his side.
'What can I do?'
''Run your toe down the plant stock to the bottom. Dig in the mud with your toe and then follow a big root out 'til you come to a ball. Break it off with your… '' He grimaced in concentration as he spoke, and a white ball floated to the surface. 'As I was saying
… with your toe and you'll get one of these.'
Doing as he said, she sent her foot down the stock and tried to find the lateral root. But by now everything ached; her teeth chattered and she felt faint. Still she wanted to do it.
Squirreling her foot around in the mud, she tried to find a root. But it eluded her, while Kier popped up another, then another.
'Are you all right?' he asked.
She watched his lips move in seeming slow motion. Her world was swimming in glue. If only she could just get one of those damn tubers.
Abandoning the use of her foot, she ran her hand down the stem, determined to grab one. She went under. On the bottom her hand found a root ball, then a large strand. She yanked. Up she shot. There it was… a white tuber.
'Yes!'
'Come on.'
Kier was walking toward the shore with his hands full. Pushing herself, she straggled to follow him, clambering with numb feet up onto the bank. She watched while he deposited the edible portion of the arrowhead plant in the snow. Before returning to the water, he glanced in her eyes, perhaps to determine how she was managing in the cold. Methodically, he bent over and began pulling bulrushes. She could feel him discreetly studying her and wondered if he was admiring her or merely concerned for her survival.
'Grab like this.' He showed her to hold fast to the base of the young plants to get the root ball. They pulled up ten or so and moved to the cattails. Kier showed her some smaller plants, no more than a foot high.
'Like this,' he said, grasping the cattail inside the two outer leaves and pulling. Then they worked in calf-deep water, side by side, harvesting cattails in earnest. Occasionally, she glanced his way, and when she did, she had a feeling that, even as he worked, he was totally aware of her. After they had half a dozen of the smaller plants, Kier began on the larger ones. But when she tried to stand next to him she discovered that her legs felt like flimsy stilts under a drunken clown.
'You can help most by getting dressed so we can break the plants into the parts we need,' he said.
Gratefully, she struggled onto the shore, her feet like dead flesh, and made her way to the backpack. Fumbling through Kier's clothing, rope, ammunition, and hand grenades, she found her clothes. As she pulled out her things and set them on the pack, she looked for something to dry herself.
'Use my shirt,' Kier called out.
Turning away from him, standing as near the tree as possible, she shucked the loincloth and toweled herself vigorously.
On the way back to the cabin, hauling the food, Jessie began to feel a chink in her armor. Although she couldn't put her finger on what had changed, there was something about the shared adventure in the pond, the toughness of it, maybe the acceptance of his challenge, that bound them. Whatever-she was developing hope. It was a startling admission, but Jessie had grown weary of denying it. And this hope was a damnably dangerous thing.
Chapter 23
A man with a handsome face is good for a summer, a man with a sharp eye and strong bow is good for many winters.
