This Calder Range (Calder Saga 1)

“Then I’ll run away again,” Lorna declared, to take advantage of this hold she had over him.

It unleashed the violence in him. His leather-gloved fingers forced their way inside her bonnet to grab a handful of hair, loosing it from its matronly bun and pushing the bonnet off her head. His brutal grip pulled painfully at the roots to tilt her head back. Lorna felt the first quiver of alarm.

“Like hell you will.” It was a snarl, followed by a cruel violation of her lips.

Lorna struggled in panic, but his arms were like steel binding her against him. Her lips started bleeding under the grinding pressure of his mouth, and the rough whiskers scraped her tender skin

. He was exacting retribution for her threatened desertion of him, dominating her physically to destroy the seeds of revolt.

In his mind burned the memory of a mother who had abandoned him and the years of hell his father had endured. It was this black and bitter hatred that drove him to abuse. Even the thought of Lorna leaving him was a pain that ripped him apart, leaving him only with a violence that he couldn’t control.

Her whimpers never penetrated the fiery mists that controlled his conscience. Benteen knew nothing of what he was doing when he forced her to the ground and fought his way through folds of material to tear aside her undergarments. He didn’t taste the blood on her lips or feel the wet tears against his skin. He was a male animal, basely subduing the female.

When his fury was spent, she was limp beneath him. The mists that had blinded him began to dissolve. His eyes focused on the face turned away from him—the wetness of her cheeks and the red stain of blood on her chapped lips. She was shaking with sobs that made no sound.

Benteen was sickened by what he’d done to her. A violent nausea rose in his throat to choke him as tears stung his eyes. He’d never felt less a man in all his life. It was a wrong that could never be undone.

“Lorna.” His fingers moved tentatively to touch her cheek.

“Don’t.” She flinched from him, shutting her eyes tightly.

If she had stabbed him in the heart with a knife, the pain couldn’t have been greater. In sharp contrast to his brutal possession, he tenderly rearranged her clothes, but she continued to lie unmoving on the grass. His tortured gaze was turned skyward.

“God, forgive me.” It was a barely audible murmur that he didn’t offer to Lorna, because he didn’t think she ever could forgive him. Then he turned back to her, unable to walk away and leave her like this. “Lorna.”

“Leave me alone.” Her broken voice made the request that he couldn’t give to her.

“No, I won’t leave you,” Benteen said quietly. “And I don’t blame you for hating me.”

“Why did you have to say that?” She opened her teary eyes to look at him, but he couldn’t meet them. She felt defiled and humiliated, yet strangely guilty, too.

“I went crazy at the thought of you leaving me. It will never happen again.”

Lorna shivered with the sensation that it was more than his anger he was burying; it was his ability to feel deeply as well. His sexual abuse had left her with loathing, but hate didn’t describe what she felt toward him, although she couldn’t have said she still loved him either. It was all too brutally fresh for Lorna to assess the damage to her feelings toward him.

Only one other time had she seen Benteen come so close to the violent hatred he had just displayed. She had thought he was going to strike her on that occasion when she had rescued his mother’s picture from the fire—a mother who had left him, as she had threatened to do.

Lorna was faced with the knowledge that she was partly responsible for what had happened. She had made her threat in anger, but there was never any real possibility that she would have carried it out. She had found a way to hurt him and used it, never thinking of the consequences. Like Benteen, she discovered there was nothing she could say.

She sat up, keeping her back to him while she wiped the tears from her cheeks with the hem of her grassstained skirt. He waited silently, making no attempt to help her to her feet. Her hair was loose, falling down her back and tangling with her sunbonnet.

“I’ll help you look for the rose cuttings,” Benteen said.

“No. I don’t want them.” They would always be a reminder of what had happened here. It was going to be difficult enough for them to forget.

They walked together back to the noon camp, but they’d never been further apart. It was a gap they both had a hesitant wish to bridge, yet neither knew how to begin. They separated when they reached the wagons. Benteen remounted his horse and rode out to the herd while Lorna climbed into the back of the stuffy wagon to fix her hair and think privately.

They held the restless cattle through the noonday heat before starting them out again. Ten miles from the Arkansas, the Longhorns caught the smell of its water. The problem became preventing the herd from stampeding to the river. The brindle steer, dubbed Captain after it had led the herd across the Red River, did its part in checking the mad flight of the thirst-crazed cattle by maintaining a steady pace and hooking its long horns at anything that tried to pass him.

When they reached the river, it became lined with multicolored hides as the cattle waded into the water. The great majority of them stood there, moaning low and absorbing the wetness into their thirst-craved bodies and waited to drink a little. A scant few overdrank and died.

While the cattle drank, the trailhands went upstream and sprawled facedown on the edge of the river to drink their fill. Not far away, in plain view of the camp, sat Dodge City. Lorna hadn’t realized how hungry she was for the sight of a building.

In camp that night, she and Benteen said very little to each other beyond what was necessary. She went to bed early and lay awake a long time, waiting for him. When he came to the wagon, she didn’t pretend to be asleep, but remained on her side, faced away from him. After he’d undressed, he crawled under the quilt. She unconsciously stiffened when he accidentally brushed against her. Lorna forced herself to relax. In the eyes of God, he was her husband “for better or for worse.” She rolled over to lie facing him. His hands were clasped under his head as he gazed at the canvas ceiling.

“We’ll let the herd graze and rest here for a couple of days,” he said. “Tomorrow we’ll go into Dodge City to restock the supplies.”

“There’s a few things I need to buy,” Lorna replied, and realized he was expecting her to reaffirm her intention to leave him there. “I’m going to miss Mary,” she said to let him know she was staying.