Her head still bent over her chest, she raised her eyes to him, then immersed her hands into the mud and drew forth two great globs of the cold slosh.
He saw real mischief sparkling in her narrowed gaze and looked forward to seeing what she would do to him. “Go on,” he pressed. “I dare you. I double-dare you. Hell, I quadruple-dare you.”
The mud sliding beneath her sleeves and down her arms, Theodosia suppressed a shiver. She knew if she threw the mud at Roman, he’d throw more back at her. Becoming so totally filthy was not a pleasant thought, but backing down from Roman’s quadruple challenge was far worse.
He ducked just as she flung the mud at him. “Ha ha, you missed!”
The mud fight became serious business to her then. Resolute in her efforts to muddy him, Theodosia withdrew more mud from the puddle, but lost her chance to toss it at him when he rose from the ground, pulled something out of his saddlebag, and ran into the woods.
She followed, but at a much slower pace. “Roman?” Listening for sounds that would tell her where he was, she peered all through the thicket. “Roman?”
The loud caw of a crow startled her into dropping her mud. “Roman, I do not find this hiding game of yours at all diverting. Make your presence known at once, or I shall—”
She stopped speaking. Or she would what? she wondered. What threat could she give him?
“Roman, if you do not show yourself this very instant, I shall cease to play with you.”
Nothing. No sound, no movement, no Roman. “Very well,” she called into the woods, “I am returning to camp.” She turned, took a few steps, then stopped abruptly.
Fear lashed through her like a thousand whips. At the base of the tree that grew not a foot away from where she stood lay a rattlesnake, its thick body coiled, its tail clattering in deadly warning.
“Roman,” she whispered without moving her lips. “Roman.”
She’d barely finished saying his name a second time, when all of a sudden he was there. It seemed to her that he’d fallen from the sky and landed directly upon the dangerous serpent.
In the next moment he held the writhing reptile out in front of her, his fingers clasped firmly behind its head. “Want to pet him?”
She moved well away. “No.”
“Aw, come on, Theodosia, pet him. There aren’t many people in the world who can say they’ve petted a live rattler. Pet him.” He stepped toward her. “Pet him.” He advanced toward her again. “Pet him.”
She knew he wasn’t going to give up. “You’ll hold him tightly, won’t you.”
“If he shows one sign of trying to bite you, I’ll bite him myself.”
Trying to take some small measure of comfort in his absurd promise, she slid one finger down the squirming snake’s back. “All right, I petted him.”
“You did good, Theodosia. Real good.”
She almost corrected his grammar from “good” to “well,” but found his mistake strangely soothing. “Where were you, Roman?”
Using the snake’s head as a pointer, he raised his arm and gestured toward the branches of the tree. “I saw the snake before you did and was just getting ready to warn you, when you turned around and nearly stepped right on it. Leave it to you, Theodosia, to walk straight into danger.”
She watched him carry the snake deep into the glade. He returned without the reptile, and she realized he’d set it free. “Another man might have killed the rattlesnake.”
Roman flicked a bit of dried mud off his thumbnail. “I kill for food and defense. I didn’t want to eat that snake, and it wasn’t going to hurt me.”
With that, he pulled from his pocket the bar of soap he’d taken out of his saddlebag, and headed toward the creek.
She knew where he was going, knew what he planned to do there, and knew she shouldn’t follow.
She followed.
“You look like Santa Claus.”
Roman gave his long full soap-beard a final pat, and swished his sudsy hands in the cool creek water. “And you look like you have a white owl on your head.”
“This is a hat, Roman. An ermine hat.” She reached up and reshaped her soap-hat.
