“Oh, Eb’s always gettin’ in an uproar about nothin’. You got no cause to be alarmed, gal. I been travelin’ this trail for years and years, know it backwards and forwards. There ain’t a man alive more capable of gettin’ you safely to Natchez. You just put all that talk outta your mind, hear? It ain’t worth thinkin’ about.”
“I’ll try to,” I told him. “I think I’ll go to bed now.”
“You go on. I’m gonna sit here a while and have me a cheroot.”
“You intend to sleep here?”
“I sure as hell ain’t gonna sleep out in th’ hall. Don’t you worry none. Go on to bed.”
I went into the bedroom and, blowing out the lamp, undressed in the semidarkness. Soft rays of light from the other room filtered in through the doorway, leaving the rest of the room a hazy blue-gray. The window was open, and a cool breeze drifted in. I could smell tobacco burning as Rawlins smoked his cigar. Completely naked, I climbed under the covers. The coarse linen sheets were cool and clean, smelling of soap. I felt a certain apprehension. Thus far Rawlins had made no attempt to make love to me, but then we had never shared a bed.
Perhaps a quarter of an hour passed before he finally stepped into the doorway. He leaned against the frame with one shoulder, peering at me with a thoughtful look in his eyes. I gripped the sheets nervously, watching him. Rawlins noticed. He grinned sheepishly.
“Don’t get yourself all riled up, wench. I ain’t gonna do nothin’ you don’t want me to do.”
He pulled off his buckskin tunic and tossed it onto a chair, slipped out of his moccasins, and kicked them across the floor.
“Aren’t you going to blow out the light?” My voice was tight.
“Reckon I’d better, at that.”
He stepped into the other room. A moment later there was only darkness. I heard him come back into the bedroom, heard him struggle out of the clinging buckskin leggings. Pale rays of moonlight slanted in through the window, tinting the air with a faint silver glow, and I could barely distinguish his naked body as he draped the leggings over the side of a chair. A moment later he sighed heavily and climbed into bed beside me. The springs creaked. The mattress sagged with his weight, causing me to roll over against him. I moved back over quickly, but his leg still touched mine. I could feel his warmth, smell flesh and perspiration and ale.
“You all snug and cozy?” he inquired.
“I—I’m almost asleep.”
“Nice to be in a real bed, ain’t it?”
I didn’t reply. I was acutely aware of his nearness, and I experienced familiar sensations in spite of myself. Disturbed, I tried to make my mind a blank, tried to ignore the male body sprawled out beside me, but it was impossible. I remembered the time he had kissed me beside the wagon the day of the fair. I remembered the dizziness and the delight as his strong arms held me and his lips worked over mine, summoning an instant response. I had felt disloyal to Derek then because another man had been able to arouse the physical response Rawlins had aroused.
“I been lookin’ forward to this for a long time,” Rawlins said.
“Jeff, I—”
“Didn’t wanna force myself on you before,” he interrupted. “Figured I’d wait till you snapped outta your trance. You’ve been grievin’ for Hawke, I know, and I was willin’ to respect your grief.”
“Please don’t. Please just—”
“I know Hawke meant a lot to you, wench. I reckon you was near ’bout crushed when he sold you like he did, in a fit of anger. That’s the past, over and done with. I’m gonna make you forget all about him, and that’s a promise.”
Shifting position, he pulled me into his arms and covered my mouth with his own. It was a long, leisurely kiss. He held me loosely, savoring my lips with his own, his right hand gently massaging my breast, and my head seemed to swim. Raising his head, he chuckled softly and stroked me with fingertips that tenderly explored.
“A man like Hawke—he don’t know how to appreciate a woman like you. Me, I reckon I appreciated you the moment I first laid eyes on you.”
“Jeff—”
And then he lowered himself on me as though I were a cushion, and he kissed me again, lazily, and I found myself wrapping my arms around him, pulling him closer. I was alive with sensations I thought I would never be able to feel again. Rawlins entered me, moving slowly, savoring each second, savoring each sensation, using my body as a great musician might use a cherished instrument, tenderly. I seemed to be soaring through space, waves of ecstasy sweeping me further and further away from sanity and reason, and I forgot about Derek, forgot about everything but this man, this moment. He shuddered, sinking his teeth into the soft flesh of my shoulder, and I cried out, clasping him to me as I was swept into a realm of incredible pleasure like nothing I had ever felt before.
XIII
It was mid-afternoon, two days after we had left Crawley’s Inn, and I was exhausted. We had been riding hard all day, with only a short break for lunch. I had grown to detest Jenny, my mule. She had balked several times already today, once in the middle of a small stream we were crossing. I had promptly tumbled off, landing in the water with an enormous splash. Nothing was hurt but my pride, and Rawlins’s riotous laughter hadn’t helped a bit. The heat was intense. We were traveling through real wilderness now, and the trail was much rougher than anything we had passed over before.
“I’m tired!” I protested.
“You’ll never make a pioneer,” he taunted.
“I’ve no desire to be a pioneer.”
“Expect me to mollycoddle you, don’t ya? If we stopped everytime you started gettin’ tired, we’d never reach Natchez.”
“Jeff, I mean it. I’m exhausted.”
“Just keep forgin’ ahead,” he called amiably. “We’ll take a rest ’fore too much longer.”
I sighed and dug my knees into Jenny’s sides, urging her on. My blouse was damp with perspiration, my skirt bunched up over my knees. A swarm of insects buzzed in the air. I slapped one of them off my arm. The sun beat down fiercely, slanting through the thick tree limbs to burn my skin. Crawley’s Inn seemed a distant paradise. Rawlins moved on ahead, leading the third mule behind him, and I dared not lag too much. This wild, savage land was terrifying, unlike anything I had ever seen before, and, too, I couldn’t forget the talk about Indians.
The trail wound through the dense woods, sometimes vanishing altogether, it seemed, hardly worthy of being called a trail at all. Although Jeff assured me the Trace was the main thoroughfare through the wilderness, we had encountered no one. This territory had been ceded to the English after the French and Indian War—Jeff had regaled me with tales of that conflict, most of them featuring hordes of howling savages—but I failed to see why anyone would want it. Although it did have a certain majestic splendor, it was much too vast, too wild.
At least Carolina had been partially civilized, with farms and plantations and settlements abounding, Charles Town a thriving port. I felt a stab of pain, remembering, and I forced all thoughts of Carolina out of my mind. I wouldn’t think about it, I vowed. That was behind me. My life had taken another abrupt turn, and survival was all that mattered now. I was going to survive, and I wasn’t going to end up in a brothel in New Orleans. Already I was contemplating my escape. It was out of the question now, of course. Where would I go? But once we passed through this wilderness, once we reached civilized country again, I would give Jeff Rawlins the slip at the first opportunity and, somehow, make a new life in the French and Spanish territory.
In the meantime, I could do nothing but stick closely to him until we left this wilderness behind. If one had to travel through this godforsaken country, I could think of no better traveling companion. For one thing, I was confident in his ability to get us through safely, and, for another, he was undeniably engaging and entertaining, constantly telling tall tales of his exploits and those of Daniel Boone. Boone, one of the first to explore these parts, was obviously one of his heroes. I might be exhausted, I might b
e uncomfortable and frequently irritated, but with Jeff Rawlins I was never bored.
There was the physical part, too. He was a superb lover. I couldn’t deny that. Even on blankets spread over the rough ground, he was superb, and I gave myself to him willingly. It was all part of my plan. By the time we reached civilization, he would be completely sure of me, convinced I couldn’t do without him, and he was bound to grow lax, seeing no reason to keep a close watch over me. It would make my escape all the easier. I justified it to myself this way, but the fact remained that I enjoyed our lovemaking as much as he. My mother’s blood? Perhaps, but I wasn’t particularly concerned. There was no place for moralizing in the middle of the wilderness.
We had been climbing the trail for some time, and soon we were on the crest of a hill, the trail winding down in front of us. Jeff came to a halt, and I drew Jenny up beside him. A spectacular vista unfolded before us. Against a pale-blue, sun-drenched sky we could see the tops of distant mountains, a hazy violet-gray, the slopes covered with trees, a patchwork of greens and browns. There was a stream below, sparkling silvery blue, now visible, now hidden by the trees, and the land itself was a rusty reddish brown. It was incredibly beautiful. I could sense Jeff’s response. He loved this land. He was at home here. It was a part of him.
“It’s really somethin’, ain’t it?” he said quietly.
“It’s quite lovely. If you like wilderness,” I added.
“Someday it’s all gonna be ours.”
“Ours?”
“It’s gonna belong to us—the people. We’re the ones who’re gonna conquer it, settle it. The French, the British, all them bloody politicians with their grants and deeds—they’re gonna have to pick up their papers and go back home.”
“You don’t consider yourself British?”
“Hell, no! My folks were, sure; they came to Virginia fifteen years before I was born. I was born there, in the American Colonies. I’m an American. That’s what the British call us, usually with a sneer. If things keep goin’ like they have in Boston and Philadelphia and them parts, the redcoats ain’t gonna be so disdainful. Reckon the ‘Americans’ will throw ’em out.”
“That sounds suspiciously like treason,” I remarked.
“Could be,” he replied amiably. “Me, I couldn’t care less about politics and such. I can get along wherever I happen to be—English territory, French, Spanish, don’t much matter. But I hear talk. People up in that part of the country are gettin’ fed up, tired uv bein’ subjects of a distant king who’s batty in the head.”
King George was, indeed, quite mad at times. Everyone knew that. It was said he frequently had amiable chats with oak trees and claimed they chatted back, and he was kept confined for long periods of time, yet he was still our Monarch. I felt a fierce loyalty to the homeland, which was surprising after my experience with the English legal system. Still, here in the middle of this overwhelming wilderness, everything else seemed remote and unimportant. Men like Jeff were more concerned with living than law, and what took place in England and the eastern Colonies didn’t affect them much one way or the other. He continued to gaze at the land unfolding before us, savoring its wild beauty as he would savor the beauty of a woman, and then he prodded his mule gently and started down the trail, leading the other mule behind.
Groaning, I followed. The trail was steep, and I bounced viciously, but soon we were on semilevel ground again, the lovely vista gone, trees growing thickly on either side, blotting out any view. It seemed an eternity before we finally reached the bank of the small stream. There was a grassy clearing shaded by trees, clusters of orange and reddish-orange wild flowers sprinkled over the ground. The stream was shallow, making a pleasant, melodic sound as it rushed over the large yellow-brown rocks scattered about the bed. There was at least two hours of daylight left, and I was surprised when Jeff suggested we stop for the night.
“Looks like a good place to camp,” he said, “and I don’t wanna tire you out too much—for selfish reasons. We’ll stop early, then get a good start in the mornin’.”
“I’ve no intention of arguing,” I retorted, eagerly dismounting.
Jeff swung himself off his mule and grinned. “You got a lot of stamina, ya know that? Oh, you complain a lot, always groanin’ and beggin’ me to stop for a while, but you keep right on pluggin’.”
“There’s not much else I can do under the circumstances.”
“Some of the women I’ve hauled through these parts—you wouldn’t believe the trouble they were.”
“I can imagine,” I said dryly.
As he fed and watered the mules, I thought of Maria Crawley and the way she had tried to justify the trade he engaged in. It was quite true that most of the women who came over on the prison ships were prostitutes, or worse, and I supposed any one of them would much prefer working in a brothel in New Orleans to doing the kind of hard manual labor they were likely to have to do otherwise. Angie, for example, would have jumped at the chance. That made it none the less unsavory. He knew that I wasn’t a prostitute, yet he intended to sell me just as he had sold the others.
“How many women have you taken to New Orleans?” I inquired.
“Oh, couple dozen, I guess. No sense wastin’ my time with them who ain’t young and pretty, and not too many young and pretty women come over on the ships.”
“I suppose some of them fell in love with you.”
“Reckon a few of them did. Quite a nuisance.”
“You’ve—never been in love?” I asked.
“Never had time, too busy makin’ a livin’. I figure a woman’s like a good meal or a glass o’ fine whiskey—somethin’ to be enjoyed wholeheartedly but nothin’ to lose your head over.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Say, you ain’t fallin’ in love with me, are you?”
“Not a chance,” I retorted.
He looked relieved. “Wouldn’t wanna complicate things,” he said.
It would be all too easy for most women to fall in love with him. He was exceedingly attractive physically. Superbly built, he did indeed resemble an early Roman gladiator, one incongruously dressed in fringed buckskins and moccasins. There was the charm, too, and the jaunty, easygoing manner. He was, I knew, as rugged and virile as they came, yet there was a gentility about him as well. Rawlins would not be afraid to show tenderness. Though he delighted in teasing me, he had been extremely considerate from the first. So unlike Derek in every way … I had loved, and I had been deeply wounded, and I was never going to love again, certainly not a man who intended to place me in a brothel for profit. Sleeping with him was one thing. Loving him was something altogether different, and there wasn’t a chance of it.
“How’d you like some fresh fish for supper?” he inquired.
“Fish?”
“This stream’s full of ’em, just waitin’ to be caught. Tell you what, you build a fire—you’ve seen me do it enough times to know how—and I’ll catch us some fish to cook.”
Pulling his hunting knife out of his scabbard, he examined the branches of a tree growing nearby, selected one and cut it off, then began to sharpen one end. When he was finished, he had a crude but serviceable spear. Taking off his moccasins, he stepped into the stream and, spear held aloft, gazed intently at the water. A moment later he brought the spear down quickly. There was a mightly splash, and when he held the spear aloft again a large, silvery fish was writhing on the point. He gave a shout of triumph and slung the fish on the bank, where it flopped for a moment and then grew still.
“Trick I learned from the Indians,” he called.
“Clever,” I retorted.
He splashed about in the stream, as happy and excited as a boy, spearing three more fish while I fetched the shovel from the pack, dug a narrow hole in the ground, lined it with rocks and then placed wood on top of the rocks. After gathering up more wood and some dry brush, I attempted to light the fire with the flint. It wasn’t nearly as easy as it looked, and it took me a good fi
ve minutes to ignite the brush with a spark. By the time I had finished, Jeff had decapitated the four fish and was scraping scales off. He deboned them and, looking inordinately pleased with himself, took an old iron skillet from his pack and began cooking the fish, turning them with a long metal fork he’d also removed from the pack. I watched, feeling quite relaxed and at ease.
“You’re quite handy to have around,” I remarked.
“Reckon I am,” he admitted. “A wench could do worse.”
“I imagine she could. You’ve done a lot in your life, haven’t you?”
“I’ve knocked around quite a lot. Left home when I was thirteen, struck out on my own. Took a lot of odd jobs. In ’55 I joined Captain Waddell’s Carolina Militia. That’s when I first met Daniel Boone. He was twenty-one, four years older’n me. Joined up as a wagoner, Dan did. Both of us went with General Braddock’s expedition to drive the French from Fort Duquesne. We were ambushed by Indians as we were advancin’ on the fort. The whole damn expedition was almost wiped out—me and Dan and a handful of others were the only ones to get away with our scalps. Lost any interest in the military life after that, I can tell ya for sure.”
“You’ve already told me about the French and Indian conflict,” I reminded him. “What did you do after that?”
“Did a bit of scoutin’, bit of trail-blazin’, but I didn’t have the knack, not like Boone. I finally ended up in Louisiana Territory, great place for an ambitious young man. Spent most of my time in and around New Orleans. It belonged to the French then. They ceded all territory west of the Mississippi to Spain in ’62, includin’ New Orleans. Hell, this land changes hands so often a chap never knows who it belongs to.”
“What did you do in New Orleans?”
“Did a bit of tradin’. Raised hell mostly. Then I started makin’ these expeditions to Carolina to see what the ships brought in, peddlin’ goods as I went along. Reckon this is my last trip. I’m gettin’ tired of all this travelin’ back and forth. I got plans—”
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