“Oh, no! I’d dirty it. It’s so lovely, Corin,” Caroline enthused.
“Well, I’m dirty too; and I say we try it out.” Corin took her hands and then her waist, and then linked his arms around her.
“Wait! No!” Caroline laughed, as he pulled them both down to land, bouncing, on the mattress.
“We never did get our wedding night,” he said softly. The sun streaming in from the window lit his hair with a soft coronet and threw his brown eyes into shadow. Caroline was very aware of the stale smell of her own unwashed body, and the dryness of her mouth.
“No. But it’s not bedtime yet. And I need to bathe… and someone might see in.”
“We’re not in New York any more, love. You don’t have to do as your aunt tells you, and we don’t have to do what society tells us…” Corin placed his hand flat on her midriff and Caroline caught her breath, fast and shallow in her chest. He worked each button of her blouse free and smoothed it gently aside.
“But, I-”
“But nothing,” Corin murmured. “Turn over.” Caroline obeyed, and Corin fumbled slightly as he undid the laces of her corset. Released, the sudden rush of air into Caroline’s lungs made her head spin, and she closed her eyes. Corin turned her to face him and traced the lines of her body with the roughened palms she had noticed the first time they met. He kissed her eyelids softly. “You’re so beautiful,” he said quietly, and his voice was deep and blurred. “Eyes like silver dollars.” Alarmed by the force of the passion she felt, Caroline kissed him as hard as she could. She had little enough idea what to expect, knowing only that Corin now had rights to her body that nobody had had before. Bathilda had hinted darkly at pain that was to be borne, and duties that were to be performed, but the press of Corin’s skin against her own was a feeling more wonderful than any she had yet experienced; and the gentle insistence of his touch, the shift of his weight between her thighs, filled her with a sensation that was hot and cold and almost painful and so far beyond anything she had felt before that she cried out in astonished joy, no longer aware that there was any impropriety, or anybody else in the world to hear her.
Corin toured his new wife around the ranch in a buggy, since it was too far to walk and she had never ridden horseback before. He had seemed stunned by this fact, but then he’d shrugged and said, “Don’t worry; you’ll learn soon enough.”
But Caroline did not trust the animals, with their ugly teeth and brute strength, and the thought of sitting atop of one did not appeal to her in the slightest. When Corin proudly introduced her to his brood mares, and to the stallion Apache, Caroline nodded and smiled and struggled to tell them apart. The creatures all looked the same to her. He drove her around the various corrals, stock pens and cattle chutes, and the low, roughly built bunkhouses where the line-riders slept. Caroline noticed how comfortable her husband seemed, without a trace of the uncertainty or diffidence he had shown in New York society. They passed a pitiful-looking hovel, half dug into the ground and then roofed with planks and sod.
“That would have been our home, if you’d come to me much sooner!” Corin told her with a smile.
“That?” Caroline echoed, appalled. Corin nodded.
“That dugout’s the very first dwelling I put here when I staked my claim in ninety-three. And I wintered in it twice before I got a proper house set up-I found one out on the prairie and dragged it here-if you can believe that!”
“You stole a house?”
“Not stole! No, not that. I suppose it had been put up by some boomer, trying to settle the land before it was legal. Well, whoever built it had moved on, or been moved on. It was just sitting there, sheltering nothing but rattlesnakes; so I shook them out, loaded it on a flatbed wagon and dragged it back here. It was a good little house, but certainly not roomy enough for a family.” As he said this he took her hand and squeezed it; and Caroline looked away bashfully.
“A large family?” she queried, tentatively.
“I reckon four or five kids ought to do it,” Corin grinned. “How about you?”
“Four or five ought to do it,” she agreed, smiling widely.
“Here, now; this is the shelter we bring the mares into when they’re due to foal.”
“What’s that?” Caroline asked, pointing to a conical tent beyond the mare’s corral.
“That’s where Joe’s family lives. See the dugout beside? Joe and his wife sleep there, but his folks wanted a teepee like they’d always had, and so that’s what they live in still. They’re a traditional sort of people.”
“Why would… Joe’s family live in a teepee?” Caroline asked, perplexed. Corin looked at her, as puzzled as she.
“Well, they’re Indians, sweetheart. And they like to live as they ever have, although Joe himself is more forward-thinking. He’s worked the trails for me since the very beginning, when I could only pay him in clothes and five-cent tins of Richmond tobacco. One of my best riders-”
“Indians? There are Indians here?” Caroline’s heart quickened and her stomach twisted. She would not have been more shocked if he’d told her he let wolves roam amidst his cattle. “Hutch told me they were all gone!” she whispered.
“Well, most of them have. The rest of Joe’s people are on the reservation, east of here, on land that reaches the banks of the River Arkansas. Those that remained here in Oklahoma Territory, that is-Chief White Eagle leads them. But some went north again a few years back. Chief Standing Bear led them back to their Nebraska lands. I guess they were more homesick than the others…” he explained, but Caroline scarcely heard this brief history of the tribe. She could not believe her ears, or her eyes, that here camped on her doorstep were the savages of whose atrocities lurid stories had circulated in the east for decades. Fear froze her to the core. Wildly, she grabbed the reins from Corin and dragged the horse’s head around, back toward the house.
“Hey-wait, what are you doing!” Corin exclaimed, trying to wrestle the reins from her as the horse tossed its head in protest, the bit clanking against its teeth.
“I want to go! I want to get away from them!” Caroline cried, shaking all over. She put her hands over her face, desperate to hide. Corin steadied the horse and then peeled her hands into his.
“Now, look!” he said seriously, eyes pinioning hers. “Listen to me, Caroline. They are good people. People, just like you and me. They just want to live and work and raise their families; and no matter what you’ve heard back east where they like to paint Indians as the worst kind of villains, I am telling you that they don’t want to trouble you or anybody else. There’s been strife in the past, strife that often enough we white men brought with us, but now all any of us wants to do is get on as best we can. Joe has brought his family here to live and work alongside us, and that’s taken a kind of courage you and I can’t understand, I do believe. Are you listening to me, Caroline?” She nodded, although she could hardly credit what he was saying. Tears rolled down her cheeks. “Don’t cry, my darling. Nothing you’ve been told about Indians applies to Joe. I can guarantee you that. Come along now and I’ll introduce you.”
“No!” she gasped.
“Yes. They’re your neighbors now, and Joe is a firm friend of mine.”
“I can’t! Please!” Caroline sobbed. Corin took out his handkerchief and wiped her face for her. He tipped her chin up and smiled affectionately.
“You poor thing. Please, don’t be afraid. Come on, now. The second you meet them you’ll see you’ve got nothing to be frightened of.”