Page 16 of The Spirit of the Wolf
The rain began to fall a little harder, drowning out whatever the man might say. Despite this, she thought she heard Grey Coyote state, “I am your husband.”
“What was that?” she asked, addressing the man behind her.
Patiently, as though women were a breed apart from men, Grey Coyote repeated slowly, “I am your husband.”
“You are what?” she asked, squinting against the downpour. “Did… Did you say you are my husband?”
“That I am,” he validated. “By winning you in the game of the bowl, I have become your husband.”
Marietta sat as perfectly still as she was able, which was a feat, seeing as how she rode astride a pony. Briefly, she wondered if she had been dropped into some dramatic sideshow, a badly written play.
The rain seemed to splatter everywhere—on her, on him, on the pony, on the ground—and she was beginning to feel particularly cold, but for a reason she could not quite name, she was not of a mind to let this man know about the discomfort. At last, she pulled her thoughts together. “You can’t possibly be my husband. I barely know you.”
“Yet I won you in the game, and until I can decide what I must do with you, I am your protector, which makes me your husband.”
“No. That makes you my protector and nothing more.”
“Hiya,” said the man. “It is you who does not understand. A husband is a protector. And this I must be until I can take you to your own people.”
Marietta sat up straight. Take her to her own people? Was there hope for her after all? “You…you…” she mumbled. “Do you mean that you will take me to St. Louis?”
“I do not know what this St. Louis is.”
“I told you. It is a village that lies south of here. It is a white man’s village, and it is situated on the western side of the Mississippi River.”
“Humph.”
“Then you are taking me there?”
“Hiya. No.”
“But…I thought you said…”
“I am en route to a trader’s post, where I will leave you. It is not far from here, and it is not called St. Louis.”
“I see.” Marietta slumped against her backrest, which was the man himself. Suddenly, she sat up straight again. “But…”
“I will take you no farther.”
She didn’t answer. A trader’s post? Something off the beaten track? She could very well be stuck there for months and months.
As they continued onward, the rain let up slightly, but a wind had started to blow, and Marietta grew colder yet. Goose bumps appeared on her arms, and involuntarily she shivered, her teeth rattling. When he tightened his arm around her—almost as involuntary an action as hers had been—she asked, “Is it necessary that we wander in this rain and wind? Couldn’t we stop, seek some shelter?”
“Humph. The rain does not hurt a man, and it does much good over the land we tavel. If you look behind you, you will see that the rain wipes away our trail, making it hard to follow. And this might be good, for I think that your husband may be a poor loser.”
“He is not my husband,” she reiterated. “And, since we’re on the subject, neither are you.”
They both fell silent.
After a while, he continued, “The rain is good also for the life that is all around us. The rain is food.”
Marietta blew out a breath. Perfect. She was captured by a man who thought rain was food. What were they to eat? River water? “If you call this food, sir, I think you may have a strange idea of it. Rain is simply water. True, it is necessary for life, but it is hardly filling.”
“And yet it must be food, for a man cannot live without it.”
Marietta pressed her lips together. “It is not the same thing, and you know it. It is…water. It is not something one can chew. It is necessary, but…” She didn’t finish the thought, mostly because to her own ears she was beginning to sound shrewish. Meanwhile, she and Grey Coyote fell into a rather protracted silence, during which Marietta tried to recall what had happened between herself and her guide.
Had LaCroix tried to explain this fate to her? If he had, she certainly didn’t recall it. No, her last memory before awakening to find herself in the arms of this man had been of Jacques LaCroix’s face swimming in her vision.
