“Thank you.” Their eyes met, and she looked down at her own plate.
She was still shy with him. No, not shy. Wary. Careful. Holding herself in. For reasons that went far beyond the loss of Dan.
He didn’t dare ask. He had no right. No right to anything from her, beyond the memories of Dan. He would get her to the Oregon Country, help her find a place to settle if she’d let him. And he’d go on to an even wilder place, never knowing what could have been.
No, he knew all right.
The pounding hoof beats made all three look up.
Michael’s hand went to the revolver at his hip.
He and Pace both stood, with a single fluid motion.
“Excuse us, Mrs. O’Leary,” Pace said.
But the rider outpaced them, thudding to a stop on the other side of Caroline’s wagon. The horseman slumped over the saddle, his denimed legs clinging to the horse’s flanks, the only thing that kept him from slipping to the ground.
The horse was huge and black, the biggest, blackest animal Michael had ever seen. A devil’s own mount. The rider, a slim figure in dungarees and faded shirt, slipped from the saddle and crumpled at his feet.
Michael gathered the rider into his arms—he didn’t weigh more than a child—and sucked in his breath when he saw the feathered shaft still protruding from the denim-covered calf. He’d have to work fast.
“Mrs. O’Leary, I’m putting him in your wagon,” he said over his shoulder. “Boil some water. Pace, get the whiskey and the medicine kit, and some of Mrs. Taylor’s herbs.”
Pace was already gone.
Caroline bent over the fire.
He dipped his shoulders as he entered the low-ceilinged wagon. Caroline had already laid out her pallet for the night. He lowered the rider to it, with all the gentleness he could muster. But he’d twice been the recipient of an Indian arrow, and he knew the searing, mind-twisting pain this person must be in.
If she were conscious. Because he’d known Jenny Thatcher, the saloon girl, ever since he’d bent over her sprawled form. Never mind that she was miles from St. Joe, alone, or that she wore ragged men’s garments instead of low-cut and lacy gowns. He knew the generous mouth, the slightly slanted blue eyes, now closed, and the beauty mark on her neck. He knew, when he tipped back the hat, that her chopped-off hair would be cornsilk gold. How had she found him? Why had she found him?
Her eyes fluttered open. “Michael,” she croaked.
“Hush, now. Be a good girl. Don’t try to talk,” he said around a catch in his own throat. He had always liked Jenny.
As she rose on one elbow, a spasm of pain crossed her face. “I got to tell you. That’s why I come here—”
Light feet, the sound of someone clambering over the wagon seat, and Caroline knelt beside him with a kettle of hot water. “It didn’t come to a full boil, but it’s plenty hot,” she murmured. “Hot enough for this, anyway. Who is she?”
“How did you know?”
Caroline’s look could have withered the desert. “Don’t worry about it now.” Or ever, was the implication. She rummaged in a lidded basket. “Here are my sewing shears. I can sterilize them if you like, but they’ve never touched anything but cloth.”
“‘Twill do.” He’d worked with worse. Not the time to explain he and Jenny had only been friends. He slit the denim pants. No better way than to just yank it out. Jenny screamed and turned her face to the tent wall. Blood ran down her leg, onto Caroline’s pallet and the wagon floor. Caroline mopped it up with threadbare towels, and without a word. But when he stole a glance at her, her face was whiter than Jenny’s.
“I’m fixing to clean this wound first,” he told Jenny, in the voice he used to gentle animals. “Then I’ll bandage it, and then, if you’re still awake, we’ll talk.”
The girl’s eyes gave him her answer. Frightened eyes. Determined eyes. He hadn’t thought Jenny had this in her. Whatever “this” was.
He wiped the blood and dirt away with hot water and Caroline’s clean rags. Jenny bit her lip until it bled. But she never screamed again. He murmured to her, meaningless words of endearment, encouragement. “That’s a good girl. That’s a good Jenny. Easy now.”
Pace passed in the whiskey and simples. He crouched in the “doorway” of the wagon and looked down at the still, white face, but said nothing as Michael cauterized the wound and bandaged it. Pace had spent a different sort of time with Jenny Thatcher. He did not look happy.
Taking Jenny’s arrow out would be the easy part.
Pace left without a word, but a low string of curses followed as he walked off.
There was no good way to say the next thing. No way to shield Caroline, or to shield himself from her scorn. “I need to talk to her alone.” He rummaged through the herbs, came up with a twist of brown paper, sniffed it. “Here’s some of Mrs. Taylor’s sleeping mixture. Do you know how to prepare it?”
“I used it with Martha.” The words brought back a time neither of them cared to revisit. She took the herbs and slipped them into her apron pocket.
Caroline gathered the bloody rags. “I’ll set these to soaking, then I’ll mix up the sleeping tea. When she’s had a chance to rest, I’ll bathe her and put her in a nightgown. I’ll borrow an extra pallet from someone. She can stay with me tonight.”
“Sure and there isn’t much choice.”
Caroline just nodded numbly as she left with her rags. Her voice floated back to him. “I’ll take care of her, Michael.”
Strong stuff from the young teacher who had whimpered over a splinter.
When both Pace and Caroline were gone, he crouched beside the girl. If only they made these wagons big enough for six-foot-four Irishmen. “Jenny.” Her eyes fluttered open again. “You’ll be telling me what’s wrong? Who shot you?”
“That don’t matter.” Her voice was faint but clear. “But two men came to the bar and roughed me up. Said they were looking for you. They’re gonna kill you, Michael. They almost killed me. They would of if I hadn’t come up with a good story. And they’ll be after me soon’s they find out I lied.”
“What did you tell them?” He knew, but he wanted to hear it from her.
“That you was a teamster headed back East. I bought you some time.”
Good enough. Jenny had always been quick. “What did—do—they look like?” Don’t let it be them. It couldn’t be them.
Her voice grew stronger as she described a younger man with greasy, coal-black hair, more nose than chin, and a quick temper; and an older man with salt-and-pepper hair, a lazy eye, and a vein of anger running beneath everything he said. Kelly and Kennedy, to a “T.” Jenny could have been a writer, if women did that kind of thing.
“They’re a couple of old enemies from Ireland.” Maybe she’d buy his casual air. No, even he didn’t buy it. “I’ll take care of them.”
But Jenny was no fool, either about herself or about other people. “Michael, there’s two of them, and they want you dead.” She finished on a drifting note.
Jenny had reached the end of her endurance, and she wouldn’t need Lily Taylor’s powerful blend of herbs, at least not tonight. Didn’t surprise him when the blue eyes closed and her head rolled to one side. Jenny needed sleep. Whatever else she’d been through, she needed sleep.
But Michael sat at her bedside for a long time.
Kelly and Kennedy.
10
Michael went about his business for the next two days avoiding Jenny, avoiding Caroline, avoiding Pace, hiding—as best as a six-foot-four Irishman could—among the travelers who needed help.
Jenny laid low while Caroline nursed her.
On the third morning Michael found Jenny up and about, moving stiffly, when he came into the campsite just after dawn.
Jenny poured biscuit batter into Caroline’s spider as a wary sun peeked over the horizon.
She wore a clean shirtwaist and skirt. They must have been Caroline’s, because Jenny’s arms protruded from the sleeves, and the skirt would have been indecently
short in any other setting. Her shorn hair was clean and hugged her sculpted face, making her blue eyes seem larger. As he approached she froze. But when she saw it was Michael she relaxed and a glob of biscuit batter fell to the packed earth. “How’s Rebel?” she blurted.
“He’s well. Fed and watered.” Caring about her horse first—Jenny had the stuff, all right.
“How are you feeling?”
Her voice was tired but determined. “Better, thanks. Mrs. O’Leary said I could get up if I wanted to, but not to do too much. She’s…real nice.”
Did Caroline know who and what she harbored? She probably knew, and didn’t care. Even before Daniel and his religion she’d been compassionate, not caring about other people’s reputations. Only her own.
Michael crouched at the fireside and looked at Jenny. “Who shot you? Can you talk about it?”
Jenny shifted a little and winced. “Crazy varmint. I was spendin’ the night in a cave. Big rainstorm. I come out the next day and there he was. Wanted to rape and rob me, iffen you can believe it.” She snorted. “I got up on Rebel an’ we took off, but not before the piece of scum plugged me with an arrow. So I turned around and plugged him with my Colt.”
“What did he look like?” He and Pace had met enough “crazy varmints” on their trips.
“White man, goes around dressed like an Injun, more brains than teeth, but not much more. Dirty yellow hair…barely made the human race, iffen you ask me.” She snorted again, and he decided he wouldn’t want to be the attacker if Jenny ever found him again.
“I haven’t seen him.”
“Ain’t missed much.”
Coffee would go well about now, or some other way to clear his head. “What will you do now? Go back to the Bonhomie?”
Jenny laughed, without humor. “I’m guessing not. I took all Mr. Nelson’s money from the cash box, some clothes, and a gun from the bouncer. Plus I stole Rebel, and I ain’t giving him back.”
Michael summoned a quick mental picture of the powerful mount. That was all right, someone else had probably stolen him first. And coaxing drink and dance money out of lonely men couldn’t have been much of a life. “Then—what will you do?”
She turned, her face alive with hope. “Can I stay on? I could help you with the stock. Me and Rebel can keep ‘em in line. I wouldn’t ask for wages, just my keep. And when we get to Oregon I’ll find some kind of job. I can read, write, and cipher. I still got some of Mr. Nelson’s money, come to that.”
Women. Even when they weren’t Caroline, they confounded him.
With the tip of her fork, Jenny plucked a honey-colored biscuit from the spider. “Try this, Michael. It’s good. Coffee’ll be ready soon, and I got a mess of oatmeal going. I can do a man’s work—or a woman’s, if I have to.”
Michael swallowed a chunk. Biscuit was as good as Caroline’s, and that was saying something. “I’ll talk to Pace. Might be we can work something out.”
With their fists.
“Where’d you get the horse? He’s a beauty.” Not strong enough words to describe the coal-black stallion, eighteen hands high, but it would have to do.
Jenny loaded the biscuits onto a tin plate. “I stole ‘em. Livery stable in St. Joe. I just wanted a horse to get me here, and that’s the one they give me.” Something kindled in Jenny’s face. “Best horse I ever had, an’ when we got on the trail I found out he ain’t been gelded. I’m gonna sire him out when I get west, have me a horse farm.”
Michael scrambled for a hold on this new Jenny. “I didn’t know you knew horses.”
She bent over the fire, her short fair hair hanging around her face. “Lotta things you don’t know about me.”
Caroline swung around the corner of the wagon. Her bonnet had slipped and the new sun caught the gold highlights in her bound hair, more gold than she’d had in St. Joe, despite her militant stance against sun. She looked fresh and neat in a clean, blue-checked housedress, with a pail of water in each hand. “Oh, Jenny, thank you! Those look good! When the coffee’s ready, I’ll take some down to the Potters. Good morning, Mr. Moriarty,” she added almost as an afterthought.
The saloon girl would not, for whatever reason, be a problem for Caroline. There was only one other person who mattered, and he would be a harder sell.
Pace.
Pace ambled around the corner, ready for breakfast. He stopped, arrested by the sight of a tall, slim woman, her arms sticking out of Caroline’s shirtwaist, the sun turning her hair to golden fire. She lifted her head and saw him too. She stilled, the biscuit pan in mid-air.
“Miss Jen.”
“Hello, Pace.” They stared at each other across the campfire.
“You all right?”
“Tolerable.”
“That’s good.”
Pace jerked his head away from the camp, toward the prairie.
Michael followed, his long-legged stride matching Pace’s, until they were surrounded by open space.
Backlit by the new sun, Pace faced Michael. “So why’s she here? What does she want?”
Michael breathed deeply of the clean morning air. How close to the truth could he come? “She got fed up with things at the Bonhomie, sick of the life, and she struck out on her own. She decided to catch up with us and try her luck in Oregon.”
Pace hooked his thumbs in his belt. “Nelson give her that horse?”
He noticed everything.
“She says she stole him.”
“He’s a beauty. Can’t say I blame her.” Pace stared out across the unbroken fields, the air that already shimmered with heat. “Mike, you know what I gotta say. We can’t keep her. Single women on a train is trouble.”
But Michael would fight for Jenny. She had risked her life for him. “There’s Miss Jenkins,” he ventured.
“She’s got her brother with her, she’s forty if she’s a day, and they’re gonna be missionaries.” Pace spat out the last word. “They ain’t hardly left their wagon to mix with the rest of us. Mike, you know it ain’t the same.”
“There’s…Mrs. O’Leary.” The name still felt odd on his tongue. “She’s a widow.”
“That one.” Pace snorted. “Yeah, she’s a looker, but she jumps like a rabbit if a man comes too close. And she’s got that scared look in her eyes. Whatever that husband of hers did to her, it stuck.”
Michael’s fists balled. But this wasn’t the time to defend Daniel. Dan was safe now. Jenny wasn’t. “If Jenny traveled this far, dressed like a man on a stolen horse, making trouble is the last thing on her mind. Sure and she told me she wants out of the business.”
“Yeah. Tell that to some young buck—or old buck—who notices them long legs of hers. She’s goin’ back, Mike. We’ll escort her as far as one of the trading posts, and she can catch a ride with some wagon master headed East. Or the Army.”
“No.” Think of something, Michael. “I’ll be responsible for her, Pace. Let her earn her keep, somehow, and she’ll be under my protection. I won’t let anyone lay a hand on her. There won’t be any fights. She can bunk in with Mrs. O’Leary.”
Pace snorted a laugh. “Mrs. O’Leary? Our sweet, little widow woman, and a saloon girl?”
“She likes her. I don’t know why. Let me look out for Jenny, Pace.” Though he had never begged his boss for anything, he ground out a “Please.”
Pace swore under his breath. “All right—for now. But first fight over Jenny and she’s off my train. And you think up the excuse for her being here, one the old biddies will accept. Ain’t my problem. You’re the storyteller.”
11
They walked back to camp without speaking, the sounds of the company waking up louder in their silence. Would Pace take his usual place at Caroline’s fireside? He enjoyed breakfast as well as any man, and Caroline’s were better than most on the trail.
No, Pace struck out in a different direction, back to the Taylors’ wagon.
Michael paused for a minute.
Pace’s leathery face crinkled in a sm
ile and Lily Taylor pulled up a barrel for him to sit on. The oldest Taylor girl brought him a tin plate steaming with something. Mariah Taylor was a younger, slimmer version of her mother, with a ripe dark beauty. She was seventeen, eager to strike out on her own, and she gave Pace a smile that lingered a little too long.
Pace was a hypocrite. He’d enjoyed Jenny’s “services” back in the day.
Caroline came back from the Potter wagon, minus her basket and extra coffeepot, the sun gilding her hair, her figure slender and erect in the worn cotton. Even here, there was a grace to her. With fresh air and decent food, she had lost the white cast to her skin, and her cheeks bloomed like two prairie roses. She was tiny, and perfect, and as long as Caroline was on the train, he was immune to any other woman’s charms.
How had it happened? Again? He’d thought he’d put Caroline in his past, along with Summer Pasture and his uncle’s grudging hospitality. After he’d learned of her marriage he’d worked hard to put her out of his mind, or at least in her rightful place beside Daniel. She was safe there. So be it. He’d never dealt with married women, though he’d had offers. He had his standards.
Daniel’s wife.
Daniel’s widow.
Daniel’s.
But she wasn’t married any more.
“I’ll get to work then,” he mumbled, ducking around the side of the wagon.
~*~
Caroline clambered into the wagon bed and pulled her bucket of dishes after her. Another day behind them. They had made sixteen miles, a progress Pace called “real good.” She felt every one of those miles in her back, in her shoulders. She’d rather have been on a horse like Jenny, but that wasn’t what she’d signed on for. She smiled at the girl, who was lying on her pallet with her arms crossed over her head. “What will you be doing, Jenny?”
“I’m gonna be the assistant scout. I get to work with the animals, picket them at night, harness ‘em in the morning. Herd the cow column. Take messages to folk. I get to wear britches and carry a gun. Women will talk, but they’d do that anyway.”
“Yes. They will.”
She had given Jenny two of her nightgowns. The girl’s arms and legs stuck out. Thank goodness the nights were warm. Mercantile, she silently put on her to-do list.
Westward Hope Page 7
