Madeline Baker

by Prairie Heat

  “Excuse me,” she mumbled. “I— Oh! What are you doing?”

  “Just trying to help you up.”

  “How dare you touch me!” she exclaimed, horrified by the little shivers of delight that skittered down her spine as his strong brown hands circled her waist.

  In an effort to gain her feet, she pushed against his thighs. A tingle, like a bolt of lightning, raced up her arms as she realized how intimately she was touching him, and just how hard and well-muscled his denim-clad thighs really were.

  “Excuse me,” she said again, her voice slightly breathless.

  “My pleasure, ma’am,” Jess drawled with a roguish grin.

  “Why don’t you behave yourself, McCord?” Elias Kane rebuked him with a shake of his head.

  “Why don’t you mind your own damn business?” McCord retorted.

  Matilda sat down quickly, one hand pressed to her chest as she tried to calm her wildly beating heart. She’d never been so close to a man before, or touched one so intimately, and to do so now, however inadvertently, was embarrassing beyond words.

  She was relieved when the coach lurched forward, giving them all something else to think about.

  The rest of the day passed without incident. Matilda catnapped or spent the time staring out the window at the scenery, which never seemed to change. Mile after mile they crossed the flat land, with nothing but tall yellow grass and occasional stands of timber as far as the eye could see.

  It was dark when they reached the relay station where they would spend the night. Matilda was certain she had never been more weary, or more dirty, in her life. A fine layer of dust and perspiration covered her from head to heel. She could taste the gritty yellow dust in her mouth, feel the sweat trickling down her neck.

  The relay station consisted of a single one-room dwelling, and a large, four-rail corral. Dinner, if indeed it could be called that, was served on a long, raw plank table. A slab of charred meat, which she assumed was beef, filled most of her tin plate. Potatoes, black on the outside and mushy on the inside, and a spoonful of half-cooked corn completed the meal and cost her one dollar. If she hadn’t been so hungry, she would have given her dinner to Yellow Hawk, who wolfed his own meal down without complaint.

  After dinner, the men went outside to smoke, leaving Matilda and Yellow Hawk indoors, alone. Matilda watched the boy, wondering what he was thinking as he stared out the narrow leaded window into the moonlit darkness.

  “How old are you?” Matilda asked, somewhat abruptly.

  Yellow Hawk turned away from the window to regard her through fathomless black eyes. “I have seen thirteen summers,” he answered tonelessly.

  “Do you live with your parents?”

  Something that might have been sorrow flickered in the depths of the boy’s eyes. “I live with my mother and my uncle. My father is dead.” Yellow Hawk’s eyes glittered with impotent rage. “He was killed by the blue coats two winters ago.”

  “I’m sorry,” Matilda said quietly. Her heart went out to the boy as he fought back his tears. He was so young, and he was trying so hard to be a man. She felt a sudden rush of guilt because she was white and her people had killed his father. She wished she dared put her arm around his shoulders, to comfort him, but she knew somehow that such a show of tenderness would not be welcome.

  “It’s getting late,” she remarked. “I guess we should go to bed.”

  Yellow Hawk nodded, and Matilda’s heart ached as she watched him cross the floor to one of the pallets that had been spread before the huge stone hearth. There were only two beds, and one of the men who worked at the relay station had gallantly offered to let her use his.

  She looked at it now, repulsed by the rumpled sheets and soiled pillowcase, and decided to go for a walk instead. She noticed that Yellow Hawk was already asleep.

  With a sigh, Matilda left the building, her mind on Yellow Hawk. A boy so young should not have such sad eyes, or have known such sorrow. She had read a great deal about the wars between the whites and the Indians when she’d been back East, but the stories hadn’t meant anything to her then. They had been about nameless, faceless people who were thousands of miles away. But it was different now. She was fond of Yellow Hawk and it grieved her to know that his family had been torn apart and that her people were responsible.

  Outside, the night was cool and clear. She could see the shotgun guard and the stagecoach driver squatting on their heels some distance away, laughing softly as they shared a flask with the two men who operated the relay station.

  Her traveling companions were sitting on the edge of the narrow porch. The dark-haired man was smoking another of his smelly cigars. He nodded in her direction. The other man tipped his hat politely.

  “Nice night,” the green-eyed man said pleasantly. “I think it’s time we introduced ourselves. I’m Elias Kane and this,” he nodded in the other man’s direction, “is Jess McCord.”

  “Matilda Conway—I mean Thornton,” Matilda said.

  “Pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss Thornton,” Kane replied, smiling.

  “It’s Mrs. Thornton.”

  Kane nodded. “Won’t you sit down and join us?”

  “No, thank you,” Matilda answered, conscious of Jess McCord’s gaze upon her face, and of the way she had tumbled across his lap earlier that day.

  He was remembering too. She could see it in the mischievous glint in his eyes, in the twitch of his lips.

  “Good night, gentlemen,” she said, and practically ran back to the relay station.

  It was, she reflected as she crawled into bed, going to be a long trip.

  Chapter Three

  Matilda bit back a groan as she climbed into the stagecoach the next morning. She had spent a restless night, her mind filling with images of Jess McCord’s mocking gray eyes each time she closed her eyes.

  The cad. He had laughed at her, making her feel like a fool, and the memory cut her to the quick. She had never been laughed at. Definitely pitied because she was an old maid. Scolded by her mother for daydreaming. Rebuked by her aunt for her many faults. Shunned by the eligible men in Boston because she was unattractive. But she’d never been laughed at, at least not to her face.

  She took her usual place, grateful to be alone in the coach, at least for a few minutes. McCord. Try as she might, she could not forget the feel of his hard-muscled thighs beneath her hands or the way his hands had felt clasped around her waist. He had lifted her off his lap as if she’d weighed no more than a feather.

  But it was the memory of his eyes, those smoky gray eyes, that had kept her awake far into the night. Behind the mocking laughter she thought she had perceived a hint of some deep inner torment.

  Matilda shook the fanciful thought from her mind. The man was a brigand, likely incapable of feeling anything more than the most superficial of human emotions. What she’d seen had probably been fear, fear of whatever fate awaited him at the end of their journey.

  Through the open door, she saw Mr. Kane and McCord approaching the coach. The two men were as different as day and night, the one fair and the other dark, the one polite to a fault, the other arrogant and obnoxious.

  Matilda drew her skirts aside as Kane and McCord entered the coach. Elias Kane took his seat and tipped his hat at her. McCord nodded in her direction, a mocking smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

  A moment later, Yellow Hawk jumped inside and then they were under way.

  Matilda stared out the window, refusing to look at either of the men, but she could feel McCord’s gaze, hear his silent laughter mocking her clumsiness the day before.

  The coach rattled over a deep rut in the road, and Matilda let out a long sigh as she contemplated another day of dusty, bone-jarring travel.

  As the miles slid by, she stole surreptitious glances at the two men seated across from her. Elias Kane seemed preoccupied as he gazed out the window to his left. Despite the dust and their cramped seating arrangement, he looked quite dapper. His suit was hardly wri
nkled, his shoes had been wiped clean, and his wavy blond hair was neatly combed.

  Beside him, Jess McCord looked like an unmade bed. A lock of his hair fell carelessly over his forehead, his long black coat was dusty and rumpled, and his Levis were faded, the cuffs frayed. His moccasins were badly worn, and she wondered for the first time why he didn’t wear boots like the other men.

  With a disgusted shake of her head, she looked out the window again, wishing the trip were over and she was safe and secure in her husband’s home. How good it would be to have a place to call her own where she could put down roots and raise a family. And perhaps, in time, she would grow to love Josiah Thornton, and he would come to know and love her.

  She refused to think about what she would do if, for some reason, she did not like the man she had agreed to marry. Nor did she let her thoughts stray toward the intimate side of wedded life. She had been reared in a strict home, closely chaperoned by her mother and her maiden aunt, Hattie Claire. Neither woman had thought to enlighten Matilda on the sexual aspects of the marriage bed. Her aunt had no knowledge of such things, and Ruth Conway had considered it a necessary evil and had refused to discuss it with her daughter except to say “it” was something a woman endured for the sake of having children. Of course, Matilda and her girlfriends had been curious about the interplay between men and women and had spent long hours speculating about just what went on in their parents’ bedrooms when the lights were out and the doors were closed.

  Matilda sent a furtive glance in Jess McCord’s direction and wondered if her mother would have viewed the marriage bed with such distaste if she could have shared it with a man as handsome and virile as the outlaw, and was immediately overcome with horror for even contemplating such a vile thing.

  Good Lord, she thought, imagine prim and proper Ruth Conway locked in the arms of a desperado! If the idea hadn’t been so absurd, it would have been funny.

  She looked outside, mortified that such thoughts had even occurred to her. But she could not help hoping that Josiah Thornton was at least half as attractive as the disreputable Mr. McCord.

  *

  Yellow Hawk sighed heavily as the coach rolled along. It was hard, sitting still for so long. At home, he would be busy, helping his uncle, hunting for game, practicing with his bow, riding his horse. He wondered if his mother was well, and if his uncle had recovered from the wound he had received the day Yellow Hawk had been carried away by the white eyes.

  Yellow Hawk’s gaze turned toward the man called Kane. He did not trust the man with the yellow hair. There was something about the white man’s eyes that made Yellow Hawk think of treachery and deceit.

  The boy sat up straighter as he felt McCord’s gaze. Lifting his chin, he let his eyes meet those of the dark-haired man.

  “You’re Apache, aren’t you?” Jess remarked.

  Yellow Hawk nodded.

  “Chiricahua?”

  Yellow Hawk nodded again, impressed with the man’s knowledge.

  “That’s amazing,” Matilda exclaimed, drawn into the conversation in spite of herself. “How could you know such a thing?”

  Elias Kane snorted derisively. “Takes one to know one, ma’am. Nothing mysterious about it.”

  “You mean…?”

  “That’s right,” McCord said curtly. “I’m a breed.”

  “A breed?”

  “A half-breed,” Mr. Kane explained, his tone derogatory. “Half Apache, half white.”

  “Oh.” That explained the moccasins, Matilda thought, and noticed for the first time that McCord’s skin was the same color as Yellow Hawk’s.

  The fact that he was half Indian did not upset her, but when she met McCord’s narrow-eyed gaze, she quickly looked away, remembering all too clearly how she had fallen across his lap the day before, and the way his denim-clad thighs had bunched beneath her fingertips.

  Jess stared at Matilda for a moment, then turned away. It was always the same with white women. The mere mention of his Indian blood and they looked at him like he was dirt. He didn’t know why it still bothered him after all these years, but it did.

  Annoyed with himself, and the woman, he slouched down in his seat and pulled his hat down over his eyes, blocking his view of Matilda Thornton’s flushed cheeks.

  Elias Kane snickered, pleased by Matilda’s reaction to his news. She was a fine lady, he thought, one he’d like to get to know better. Much better.

  He smiled at her, a warm, friendly smile of reassurance. “Is this your first trip West?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “You make our country prettier just by being here,” he said gallantly.

  “Why, thank you, Mr. Kane,” Matilda replied, wondering why he thought it necessary to flatter her. She wasn’t pretty, she never had been. Plain, her mother had always called her, as plain as dirt.

  Jess scowled as he listened to Kane and the woman exchange pleasantries. Kane tried to pry into the woman’s private life, but she adroitly sidestepped all his personal questions and finally Kane gave up and turned the conversation to the land, describing the vast sunlit plains, the flowering prairies, the barren deserts, the majestic mountains, the beauty of the Pacific Ocean. Elias Kane had a gift for gab, McCord allowed, and the woman seemed fascinated by every word.

  The coach stopped briefly at noon to allow the passengers an opportunity to eat lunch and answer nature’s call, if necessary.

  Yellow Hawk ate quickly, then wandered around the coach, his dark eyes taking in every detail of the countryside. The land was flat on both sides of the road, dotted with large boulders and an occasional clump of sagebrush. There were mountains way in the distance and he wondered if they were the Dragoons, and if he would ever see his home or his mother again.

  Matilda sat in the shade offered by the Concord, wishing she were alone so she might remove her shoes and stockings and unfasten the collar of her shirtwaist. The best she could do was remove her jacket.

  McCord and Kane sat in the sun, apparently not bothered by the midday heat. Watching them, Matilda was struck again by the vast differences between the two men. McCord was exactly what she had expected Western men to be—rough, rude, close-mouthed and unfriendly. Mr. Kane, however, was the soul of politeness, and she decided he must have been raised in the East where people had manners and knew how to use them.

  The lunch break was short, and within twenty minutes the passengers were climbing into the coach again.

  With a sigh of resignation, Matilda settled her skirts around her, vowing she would never travel via stagecoach again as long as she lived. Once she reached Tucson, she was there to stay!

  She smiled faintly, thinking she would forgive Josiah Thornton any fault, any weakness, if he only had a hot bath waiting for her when she arrived.

  At dusk, the Concord pulled into another relay station to change horses and pass the night. Stiff and sore in every muscle, Matilda climbed wearily from the coach and made her way inside.

  A middle-aged couple ran the place. The woman was tall and thin, with kind brown eyes and a mop of curly brown hair. The man was also tall and thin. He had graying black hair, pale-brown eyes and a grizzled beard.

  The woman took one look at Matilda, clapped her hands together and grinned. “I know just what you need,” she said cheerfully, and taking Matilda by the hand, she led her out of the relay station and into a windowless shed located behind the main building.

  “There’s a tub inside,” the woman said, opening the door. “You go on in and get undressed, and I’ll fetch you some hot water right quick.”

  “Oh bless you,” Matilda murmured.

  “I won’t be but a minute now,” the woman said. She lit the kerosene lantern hanging from one of the rafters, then stepped outside, closing the door behind her.

  Matilda hesitated for only a moment, her reluctance to disrobe in a strange place, in such close proximity to a predominantly male populace, quickly overcome by the prospect of a hot bath.

  The woman returned in a few
minutes carrying two buckets of steaming water, which she poured into the large zinc tub.

  “I’ll be back with more water and a fresh cake of soap in a minute,” she promised as she slipped out the door.

  Crossing her arms over her breasts, Matilda backed into the far corner of the room, wishing she had waited to undress until the tub was full. Anyone could walk in on her. Anyone.

  Her mind immediately filled with Jess McCord’s swarthy image, and with it the knowledge that he was half Indian. A savage. She had never seen an Indian except for Yellow Hawk, and he didn’t look like a savage—but then, neither did McCord, though she had little trouble imagining the man with a feathered lance in his hand and a feral snarl on his lips. And those eyes…

  She shivered as she recalled the way he had looked at her when he told her he was a half-breed, as though he hated her.

  The woman entered the bath house again, chatting a mile a minute as she told Matilda to take a nice long soak since dinner wouldn’t be ready for at least an hour.

  “Be sure to keep that door locked,” the woman said, grinning. “Out here, a girl can’t be too careful.”

  Matilda nodded. “Thank you, Mrs.—”

  “Malloy, but just call me Letty. Mind you lock that door now.”

  “I will. Thank you, Letty.”

  “You’re welcome, lamb. There’s clean towels in that there cupboard. Oh, and here’s the soap.” She reached into her apron pocket and withdrew a fat chunk of yellow soap. “It isn’t pretty or fancy-smelling, but it’ll cut the trail dust.”

  The water was heavenly. After locking the door behind Letty, Matilda sank into the tub, her eyes closing as the wonderfully warm water engulfed her, soothing her aching limbs.

  She rested, unmoving, enjoying the solitude of the moment. She hadn’t had a chance to be alone for weeks and she cherished these few private moments.