Allyson’s heart pounded wildly, and her mind rushed with a mixture of hatred and desire. It was impossible to push this big man off of her, and part of her did not want to. The wild and dangerous-looking Ethan Temple was kissing her! He wanted her! This was a new and different feeling. More than that, if she went along with this, maybe he really would let them go. She considered doing just that, but as the heated kiss lingered, her reasons for allowing him his pleasure changed from plotting to have her way, to just plain enjoyment. One of his hands left her face then, trailing down over her body and under her coat to find her breast. Flashes of the way Henry Bartel had humiliated her brought her back to reality, and she began fighting him harder again.
“Don’t! Please don’t!” she whimpered.
“Why not?” a still-angry Ethan answered. “Isn’t this what you were offering me?”
“You don’t understand—”
Ethan ached to do more, but instinct told him she was more child than woman when it came to men. “You little fool,” he groaned. “Do you really think I would force myself on you? I just wanted to see how far you’d go with your lies!” Suddenly Ethan froze as he heard the click of a gun hammer.
“Get off my sister,” came Toby’s shaking voice. “I’ve never killed anybody, but I’ll shoot you if you don’t leave her alone.”
Ethan stayed on top of Allyson for a moment, watching her eyes in the moonlight. “So, finally the truth comes out.”
Allyson studied the strong, dark figure hovering over her. To her surprise he leaned down and gave her another kiss—this one was quick, sweet, gentle, as though to apologize. He got up and helped her to her feet. In one quick movement, he grabbed Toby’s wrist and pushed his arm up, then wrenched the pistol out of his hand.
“When you point a gun at a man, son, you’d better be ready to use it!” He backed away. “Now, how about the truth? I already know your real names are Ally and Toby. I heard you talking to each other. Did you really think a man who’s been scouting this territory and lived here all his life couldn’t find you?”
“We didn’t think—” Toby began.
“You didn’t think I’d be back at all last night,” Ethan interrupted. “You figured with me gone, you could sneak down here and hide, then wait for the others to come and join them as though you just got here when the land is opened up this afternoon.”
Toby hung his head. “Something like that. It was Ally’s idea.”
Ethan looked at Allyson. “I’ll just bet it was!” He shoved Toby’s gun into his own belt. “Now, how about telling me who you two really are? You running from the law?”
Brother and sister looked at each other, and Ally was the one to answer when she looked back at Ethan. “Not exactly. We came out here on an orphan train from New York. We were supposed to be taken to families out here somewhere to live, but we would have been split up. Toby and I have never been apart, and we were afraid. We figured we’d just be used like slaves to help on somebody’s farm. I didn’t want to go live with some strange man, and I didn’t want Toby to be away from me. He needs me.”
Ethan could not help feeling sorry for the fact that they were orphans, if, indeed, they were telling him the truth this time. “What are your names?”
“Allyson…Allyson and Toby Mills,” Allyson answered. “I’m sixteen, almost seventeen—just another month. Toby is eighteen. Our mother died ten years ago, and our father…he was always drunk, so he couldn’t keep a job. We had to steal to keep food on the table. Father died when we were ten and twelve. We lived in the streets and alleys for a couple of years until the police took us to a Catholic orphanage.”
“How’d you get off the train and end up here?” Ethan asked.
Allyson shivered, holding her coat tighter around her neck. She could still taste Ethan Temple’s kiss, wondering if she was shivering from the cold or from the memory of his big hand touching her breast. Had he just been trying to scare her, or did he truly have feelings for her? “We just…ran off the train. We saw the big crowd back at Arkansas City and figured we could easily get lost in it.”
“Why do I think that, too, was all your idea and not Toby’s?”
Allyson shrugged. “We had to do something or be separated. It was worth the chance we took.”
“Mmmm-hmmm. And how did you get the money to buy the supplies you needed for this trip?”
Allyson swallowed, and Toby kept looking at the ground, shuffling his feet. “I got it,” Allyson answered, deciding she might as well tell it all. “Off a mean old man who was in charge of bringing us out here. He deserves to lose his money. When Toby and I worked the streets back in New York, I learned to be real good at picking people’s pockets. I got three hundred dollars off of Mr. Bartel, and I don’t mind saying so. After the things he did to me, stealing from him is nothing compared to what I should do to him. I’d have shot him if I could get away with it!”
This time her voice broke, and real tears wanted to come. She wished she could fight them, but she was so tired she wanted to die. There had been no sleep tonight, and tomorrow was the big day.
“Please don’t turn us in, Ethan,” Toby spoke up. “Ally wants this so bad. Things happened to her back at the orphanage. That Mr. Bartel, he beat her a couple of times, and he tried to do other things to her. That’s the God’s truth. Now we’ve got a chance to make a life for ourselves, earn an honest living, stay together. We can’t go back to New York. It’s too hard for somebody our age to find decent work there, except maybe to slave away in some factory where you work such long hours you never see the light of day. We decided with this new land opening up and all, maybe we can have something of our own.”
Ethan sighed deeply. Considering the hell these two had been through, it was amazing they were both still alive and full of such spirit and determination. Allyson Mills had guts, and that attracted him as much as her fair skin and red hair and the way she filled out a dress.
“I don’t like being lied to and made a fool of,” he grumbled. “I rode all the way back to the base camp last night—got no sleep at all—just to bring you a couple of good horses so you could have something faster to ride in on this afternoon. I was going to give you some quick riding lessons this morning. I felt sorry for you having to walk in and finish last.” He shook his head, sighing and walking a few feet away from them. “Do you think this Henry Bartel is after you?”
“He wouldn’t know where to find us now,” Allyson answered. “He had to go on with the others. He might not even be through yet delivering the other children to their adoptive families.”
Ethan stood quietly for a moment. Now he understood why these two dressed so poorly—probably hand-me-downs from the orphanage. “Why in hell did you try to pass yourselves off as husband and wife?”
“Partly to protect Ally from other men,” Toby answered.
“And we thought we’d get more respect and fewer questions if we said we were married,” Allyson added. “It would also be easier to lay claim to a couple of the town lots. If they know we’re brother and sister, they might think we’re too young or something, or maybe that we’re runaways. They might start asking a lot of questions, maybe even send us back to New York if they find out who we really are. If they do, we could get sent to prison! Please don’t tell, Ethan. Please!”
“You know how terrible that would be for Ally,” Toby put in.
Ethan took a cheroot from an inside pocket of his deerskin jacket. He walked even farther away to light it, wishing he could erase the memory of how Allyson Mills’s young body had felt beneath his own. He’d never kissed a woman like that before, one with such fair skin and blue eyes, alone against the world. It gave him a feeling of possessiveness and desire. Now that he had tasted those lips, now that he knew she’d been abused, how could he let some other man be the one to show her about men and making love? How could he ignore her strengths, her courage? She was a hell of a woman in the making, a woman any man would want at his side, in spite of the fact that
she was a little thief. He could understand her reasons. Wild, she was. Wild and proud and brave…and he wanted her like he’d never wanted another.
He took a couple of puffs on the cheroot, then turned to face them. “I’m risking army punishment if I let you go. On top of that, I’m allowing you both to put yourselves in great danger. Does either one of you understand what’s going to happen here tomorrow afternoon? When people are told something is free for the grabbing, they seem to temporarily lose their minds. Normally passive people are going to turn aggressive. There will be fistfights, gunfights, you name it. It’s bad enough for those who get here the legal way. Those suspected of moonshining are going to find themselves in a lot of trouble.”
“Moonshining?”
Ethan stepped closer, directing his gaze at Toby. “That’s what some back at the base camp call the ones who tried to sneak through, ‘by the light of the moon,’ they say. You aren’t the only ones. A few were dragged back to the camp while I was there. I have no idea how many others are out there waiting to cheat on the rest. My main concern was you two, and I care a lot about you.” He moved his eyes to Allyson. It was easy to see her in the bright moonlight. “I admit you were right about one thing. I am attracted to you, and I’m not going to let you get hurt over this.”
Allyson folded her arms, pretending not to be concerned about his feelings. She wanted nothing to do with a man that way, so she decided she might as well not give Ethan Temple any hope that there could be anything between them, even though his kiss did still burn on her lips. He had forced that kiss. He was just as much an animal as Henry Bartel. She could just imagine what this crude man would be like if she gave him any encouragement. She had long ago learned that she could depend on no one but herself, and Toby. Most men were worthless brutes, and this one was part Indian besides. Just how savage could he be if a woman was willing?
“You needn’t be concerned, Ethan,” she told him. “We would certainly not hold you responsible for anything that happens to us. This is our decision, and if you really care like you say, you won’t try to stop us. If you turn us in and we lose those lots, I don’t know what will happen to us, where we’ll go.”
She kept her voice and stance firm, but never had her emotions been so confused. Everything would have worked out perfectly if Ethan Temple had not taken an interest in them. He was about to ruin all her plans. She wanted to hate him, but other feelings overwhelmed that hatred, feelings that frightened her.
Ethan walked off, returning with the two sturdy ponies he had bought for them. “Here. They’re yours.” He took the pistol from his belt and handed it to Toby. “You keep that handy. You’re going to need it tomorrow.” He turned to leave them.
“Ethan—” Allyson called.
He stopped for a moment but did not turn around. “Thank you,” she said. “We…we’ll never forget you…what you did for us.”
Ethan wondered if he had ever done anything so foolish as to fall for a sixteen-year-old, virgin white woman, let alone going completely against his principles in allowing these two to sneak through the lines and cheat on all the others waiting at the borders. In all the years he had worked as a scout for the army, he had never gone against the rules. Was he losing his mind…or his heart? “Good luck,” was his only reply.
Allyson watched the scout disappear around the bushes, and moments later she heard a horse trot away. Toby breathed a big sigh of relief. “You were right. He let us go.”
Allyson wondered why her chest hurt so much. “We’d better try to get a little sleep,” she answered. “The sun will be up in an hour or two.”
Ethan rubbed his tired eyes, realizing the sun had been up for at least an hour already. Every part of him seemed to ache from weariness as he got to his feet, and he cursed Allyson and Toby Mills, as well as himself, for his miserable condition. He had determined to forget about her, to ignore his temptation to protect her and let her and her brother face whatever they would end up facing alone. That was what they wanted, and that was what they’d get! If he’d had any sense, he would not have left them those horses. What they both really deserved was a swift kick in the rear.
He gathered a little broken, rotted wood from around the patch of trees where he had made camp and added them to some smouldering embers from a fire he had built several hours earlier. Angrily, he took items from his supplies, more coffee grounds, a little bacon. He had only slept perhaps three hours at the most. If he was going to have any strength for the strenuous day ahead, he at least had to eat. He plunked a tin coffeepot on the fire once he got it going again, poured in some water from a canteen, then put some ground coffee beans into a gauze drawstring sack, tying it shut and dropping it into the water. He wished he had fresh coffee beans instead of just the half a sack he’d had ground at Fort Supply several days ago. The stale beans would probably make terrible tasting coffee, but right now any coffee was better than none at all. He just wished there was some way to make it boil quicker.
He scratched at a stubby beard, wishing there was time and a place to bathe and shave, but he intended to ride as close as possible to the border area this morning before the expected stampede after twelve o’clock. He had already ridden a few miles the night before, just to get far enough away from Toby and Allyson to keep from being tempted to go back and help them. Let them help themselves! He would do what he was supposed to do—accompany the rest of the crazy people who would soon be heading for this area, and do what he could to keep them all from killing each other.
He poured some water into his hand and splashed it onto his face. He figured that with a couple days’ growth of beard and eyes probably bloodshot from lack of sleep, he must be a hell of a sight, but who cared? Allyson Mills certainly didn’t. He rinsed his mouth, scrubbing his teeth with baking soda, wishing there was a way to physically wash away the memory of the taste of that woman’s lips. He’d made a damn fool of himself through this whole thing, especially last night. Somehow he had lost his ability to reason, but after today that was going to end. He was getting the hell back to Fort Supply, maybe take some time to go see his father in Illinois. Little Miss Allyson Mills and her brother could proceed with their dream of getting rich in Guthrie, if they even managed to hang onto the lots they planned to claim illegally.
He walked off into the bushes to relieve himself, then got some clothes out of his gear and changed into a clean pair of longjohns and denim pants and pulled on a blue calico shirt. Although the night had been chilly, he could tell that today would be plenty warm. He ran a brush through his hair and tied it back, then threw a sliced-up potato and some bacon into a fry pan. He walked over to Blackfoot and began resaddling the horse. “Sorry to get you up and going again so soon, boy, but at least you had a little rest. Once this day is over, I’ll give you a good brushing down and a couple of days off. That’s a promise.” The horse whinnied and turned its head to nudge him in the side, as though to protest. “I know, boy. Life’s a bitch sometimes. Just suck in that gut and accept it.”
He finished strapping on the saddle, then rolled and lit a cigarette. He took a long, deep drag, walking a few feet away to study the northern horizon. In a few hours it would be black with dust from thousands of horses and wagons. Everywhere, east, west, north, and south, people would descend upon one of the last pieces of ground that was once promised to the Indians forever. So much for government promises.
He turned to walk back to the campfire, hoping the coffee was ready. He needed more than coffee to face what lay ahead, but it would have to do for now. He didn’t doubt that by tonight, a shot of whiskey would taste mighty good.
5
The silence was eerie, like the calm before a storm. Ethan allowed Blackfoot to walk slowly, man and horse ambling toward the northern border, waiting to be met by the hordes of people and wagons that would be headed his way in the mad rush that had begun at twelve o’clock. Soldiers were to fire shots into the air as the official signal to proceed, and he was sure he’d heard those s
hots far in the distance over an hour ago.
He slowed Blackfoot, not only hearing a distant rumble, but also feeling it. “Here they come, boy. Take it easy.”
Even Blackfoot sensed what was coming. The horse whinnied and tossed his head. Ethan took a chain watch from his jacket to see it was one o’clock. He heard a train whistle in the distance, and he knew the Santa Fe locomotive was on its way, probably packed with people hanging out the windows and clinging to the steps at the end of packed railroad cars. He was not far from the truth. By the time the train came into view, he could see it was just barely ahead of a thundering mass of horses, wagons, buggies, stagecoaches, carriages, mules, carts, every kind of wheeled contraption a man could name. A cloud of dust on the horizon rolled high into the air, and he felt sorry for those who were behind the ones in front. They were most certainly caught in the choking dust. Blackfoot edged sideways nervously. Ethan patted his neck. “Just relax, boy. We’ll have to keep up once they get here.”
Much as he wanted to quit thinking and worrying about Allyson and Toby Mills, he could not. Watching the approaching mass of land-hungry fiends only made him more concerned. He smashed out a cigarette against his canteen, then urged Blackfoot into a gentle lope. Soon the charging land-mongers were at his heels. He kicked his horse into a faster run and found himself caught up in the excitement. Blackfoot seemed to think he was in a race. Two horses passed him, and the big buckskin took off at a mean gallop, mane flying into Ethan’s face, Ethan’s hat popping off and bouncing at his back as its string tie remained caught around his neck.
Never had Ethan heard such near-deafening noise. The air was filled now with the sound of thundering hooves, the clatter and banging of wagons bouncing over holes and rocks, men yelping like wild Indians, here and there a scream from a woman who thought her husband was driving their wagon too fast. Somewhere in the distance he could hear another woman cussing her husband out in language he’d never even heard come out of men’s mouths. A few soldiers charged past him, one whistling and calling out to him. It was Sergeant Adams. He hoped the man never discovered he had found “Mr. and Mrs. Harrington” and had let them go.
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