Ask No Tomorrows by Rita Hestand Page B

thought you’d be butt ugly with it short, but instead you
have the eyes of an angel.”
    And more
beautiful, but he couldn’t tell her that.
    Riley stared
at him, speechless.
    “ What’s the matter?” He saw tears held back in her
eyes.
    “ No
one’s ever said anything that nice to me, Sam.”
    Riley glanced
down at her hair on the wet ground as Sam put his knife away and
bent down, stuffing a small wad of her hair into his pocket before
she saw him.
    “ Now what?” she asked.
    Sam went to
his saddle bags he had placed in the cellar during the storm. “You
take this behind them trees and you wrap yourself tight then put
your shirt back on. You can do it, can’t you?”
    He waited for
her answer, his hands shaking as he handed her the
bandages.
    “ I
guess so…”
    “ That should take care of the other.” He cleared his
throat.
    Riley stared
at him for a moment. “I won’t use it all.”
    “ Naw, we got plenty…”
    “ Okay, I’ll be back in a minute.” She smiled shyly.
    “ Yeah…” He nodded.
    Riley went
behind the bushes and peeled off her shirt. She glanced down at
herself and then began wrapping the bandages around her until it
was snug against her. She tied it off and put her shirt back
on.
    When she
returned, she lifted her arms and smiled. “Guess that takes care of
most of it, don’t it?”
    “ Yeah, but come here,” he coaxed, his face still not relaxing
as he spoke.
    She came up to
him. “What now?”
    He cut himself
on the arm with the knife, she gasped when she saw the blood ooze
on his arm, and reached to comfort him, but when he reached inside
her shirt to smear the blood on the bandage she stood very still
and stared up at him. They were close enough to kiss again, but Sam
knew that would take them to a place that was unwise. One of them
had to use control.
    “ What are you doin’?” she protested, trying to wiggle away when
he smeared the blood from his arm on her. He touched her bare skin
once and jerked his hand out quickly as though it were burned from
contact.
    “ Calm down. If anyone sees you bandaged, they might wonder why.
Now we can say you were hurt in the tornado when a branch hit you
and we had to tie your ribs up.” Sam nodded his
satisfaction.
    “ Oh…that’s good thinkin’, Sam.” She smiled. “That would never
have occurred to me. I guess I’m not big enough to worry about
this, but it will give me more confidence.”
    Almost as
though mumbling to himself, he muttered, “You’re big enough, Riley.
You’re perfect.”
    But aloud, he
merely said, “Yeah…I reckon it will do.” Sam agreed and turned to
pick up his saddle bags and sling them over his shoulder. “We’re
gonna have to walk, maybe we’ll catch up to the horse soon. I
unhobbled him just before the storm and he run off like I figured
he would. He won’t have gone too far, just out of the line of the
storm. Nodog can sniff him out in no time for us.”
    “ You got a lot of faith in that dog, don’t you?”
    “ Well, sure I do. He’s part wolf, and he knows things…” Sam
laughed.
    “ Sometimes I think animals have more sense than people. They
instinctively know more about nature. Ever notice how things smell
so good after a storm?” Riley breathed in deeply, inhaling the
scent of the earth settling once more. “Kinda like God Himself
cleaned the earth.”
    “ Reckon I’m always too busy noticing the effects of the storm,
Riley,” Sam acknowledged. “I guess men don’t take the time to
notice a lot of things.”
    “ You can actually smell the earth,” Riley said, dancing about,
her boots splashing water all over.
    “ I
guess it is cleaner.” Sam watched her from a distance away. “Shore
does clear things away, don’t it?”
    “ How do you know so much, Sam?” Riley gasped. “I mean, about
surviving and life.”
    “ Told you…I lived with the Indians. Indians know a lot about
things ordinary people don’t know. They can teach you a lot about
survival, life and how