Wayward Wind by Dorothy Garlock Page A

was sure she didn’t. Lorna had had no man.
    He heard a gasp of agony come from the young nester, and Lorna’s soothing words. The sounds reached him through the heavy
     fog of his troubled thoughts. He looked down to see Bonnie reach for Griffin’s hand and grip it hard. With tightly closed
     eyes, and jaws clenched in pain, he grasped her hand as if it were a lifeline in a storm. Her eyes looked like two burnt holes
     in a blanket and her face was filled with compassion. Even in her miserable condition she felt pity for his suffering. A disturbing
     realization hit Cooper—regardless of who and what you were, everyone needed someone.
    Lorna spent the afternoon caring for the two who lay in the cabin on the straw pallet. Cooper dressed the meat and roasted
     it over a fire he built behind the cabin. Watchfulness was a habit of a lifetime, so periodically he circled the cabin and
     scanned the area. He didn’t think Dunbar would be so foolish as to come back, but the man had suffered a blow to his pride
     and sooner or later he’d seek revenge.
    Griffin needed frequent naps because of his weakened condition, and whenever he woke he apologized again for the bother he
     was causing. Cooper waited for him to mention the fact that he was kin to Adam Clayhill, the news Dunbar had dropped, but
     Griffin said nothing; Cooper began to hope he had missed the meaning of Dunbar’s words.
    After the evening meal of beans and fresh elk meat, Cooper led the horses to water and then staked them out in the knee-high
     grass to eat. He took clean clothes from his saddlebag and followed the rocky bank of the creek until he was out of sight
     of the cabin. Behind a screen of wild plum bushes he stripped off his grimy clothes, knelt beside the stream and washed them.
     Then he washed himself and pulled on the clean buckskins, picked up his wet clothes and went back upstream toward the cabin.
    He was hanging his wet clothes on the bushes to dry when Lorna came out of the cabin. Cooper watched her approach. The evening
     light gave her skin a honeyed look against which her eyes were more brilliantly violet-blue than ever. The effortless grace
     with which she moved, the lightness of her step, fascinated him. She was beautiful to watch. She had loosened her hair from
     the thongs and it lay on her shoulders and flowed down her back. The breeze fluttered the dark curls about her face and pressed
     the loose cloth shirt against her slender figure, revealing the lovely curves of her breasts. For a fleeting moment Cooper
     was reminded of a verse from the “Song of Solomon”:
    Behold, thou are fair, my love…
thy two breasts are like young roes that are
twins, which feed among the lilies.
    Since he had been a stripling he had spent the long winter evenings reading. He had read everything he and his mother could
     find, which wasn’t much. That left the Bible, and he had read it from cover to cover. When he was young the “Song of Solomon”
     had made an impression on his young mind because it was romantic and sexual. He had read it over and over again.
    Hellfire! Why did he think of it now? He hadn’t thought of it in years. He stood still and waited for her to reach him, shocked
     by the thoughts that had spiraled through his mind.

Chapter
Six
    Lorna stood before him, her eyes meeting his steadily. “I like this time of day. I call it the golden time.”
    “It’s the lonesome time of the day when you’re alone on the trail.” Cooper realized he was staring at her and looked away
     toward the fading light in the west.
    “Night will begin in a little while,” she said a bit wistfully. “A day is ending that will never return and a night is beginning
     that will never be again.”
    “And that makes you sad?”
    “Sometimes.”
    “The moon will be coming up soon. I watched it come up last night.” They moved side by side toward the creek. “How are the
     girl and Griffin doing?”
    “They’re asleep. I think Bonnie’s in