River Bend

by Barbara Shepherd

  The doctor nodded. “But you know how my business picks up once they start lickerin’ up. I treat more knife wounds durin’ a rendezvous than I do all year long. My office is off-limits to a woman.”

  Owens paced in front of the window. “Everything is off-limits right now. I’ll try to get you across the street as soon as there’s a break, ma’am, but you’ll need to stay in your room until things thin out a bit.”

  “What about Michael?”

  The doctor looked at her with kind eyes. “He can stay here a little while longer,” he said, “and I’ll get word to you immediately if there’s any change. Any change at all.”

  Belle thanked him and walked into the room where her husband lay. Dear Michael. He looked as if he were sleeping, except for his unnatural gray pallor. “I guess you are asleep,” a hopeful Belle murmured. She caressed his cheek. “Get well soon so we can start our life together. I have so much to tell you.” With her other hand, she patted her abdomen as if to reassure her unborn child.

  Chapter Three

  Working at a feverish pace the next day, Trader Jake sized and graded each pelt brought in by the trappers. His half-brother, Stephen Owens, worked at his side, recording the dollar amounts allotted to each man. Owens’ Trading Post, the nearest thing to a general store this far west, was crowded with men of every nationality. Large, burly men pushed the smaller men aside, shoving their way through to obtain treasured commodities in exchange for a year’s worth of trapping for furs and skins.

  “Zeb, get us plenty o’ coffee this time,” a man of about forty shouted to a younger man, half his age. “Don’t care nuthin’ ’bout roastin’ them berries ag’in when we run out.”

  “Yes, Pa.” The young man scrunched up his face, perhaps in memory of the bitter coffee substitute. He waited his turn to purchase as he pressed deeper into the throng of unkempt masculinity.

  “Eez zees your home?” a voice at his elbow asked.

  Zeb looked down into the eyes of a foreigner. “Naw, we come from Kaintuk. Where you from?”

  “Near Paree. Eet eez in France.”

  Jake’s eyes darted to his left when he overheard the broken English. He surveyed the mismatched crowd as he completed his task. In the morning, he planned to travel the rivers with his cache of pelts and could hardly wait to get back to his ship, anchored in the gulf—his ship and the freedom it afforded him.

  “Is zat a woman?” a grizzled man shouted, pointing toward the hotel.

  A hush fell over the crowd. Every man’s gaze followed the direction of that man’s outstretched arm.

  Jake also looked at the woman, gazing down on them from her second-story hotel window. He remembered looking into that woman’s perfectly- shaped face on the ferry yesterday, intoxicated with the feminine smell of her. Mesmerized by her emerald-green eyes, he had wanted to crush her to him. Fighting his desire, he had forced his gaze away from hers.

  “She’s a married woman, you old codger,” Jake said. “Wouldn’t look in your old ugly face every day for nothing.”

  They all had a good round of laughter and began to swap tales of the women they had known, some of the men casting a wistful look toward the hotel.

  Jake studied the green-eyed lady from a distance. In his mind, he held her in his arms and stroked her auburn tresses. He tasted sweet kisses from her full, sensuous lips and lifted her young body to carry her to a feather bed covered in elegant satin where he would take her to the heights of passion.

  “Have you gone deaf on us, Jake?” Stephen’s words broke into Jake’s fantasy.

  And just in time. I was going to ravish a married woman. Grateful that no one could read his lascivious thoughts, he answered Stephen. “I can still hear you.”

  A loud voice boomed nearby, “Well, are you ready?”

  “Ready for what?” Jake scanned the crowd, seeing a few covert glances still directed toward the hotel.

  “Ready to ’rassle?” The taunt came from Samuel, a giant of a man.

  “Sure.” Wrestling matches would give Jake an outlet for his suppressed desire, a way to vent his frustration and restrain his lustful cravings. He hoped the activity would keep everyone’s attention until he could remove the green-eyed lady to a safer place, although why he felt compelled to be her knight in shining armor, he wasn’t quite sure. He stripped off his sweat-stained buckskin shirt and stepped out into the middle of a dirt street where he and Samuel circled one another, each measuring his opponent’s strengths and weaknesses.

  Samuel was quick for a man of his stature and caught Jake in a crushing bear hug against his massive, hairy chest. Jake labored to get air into his lungs while he hung suspended for a moment, his only thoughts now of survival. With all the strength he could muster, he swung his booted foot against his opponent’s ankle and was rewarded with a resounding crack. Both men fell in one muscular mass, the red earth coating their straining sinews and streaking red rivulets of sweat down each tanned torso.

  Samuel released Jake from his vise-like grip and cradled his injured extremity in his ham-like hands while Jake called the match a draw.

  When Samuel and the crowd voiced their displeasure, Jake pacified them. “Can’t let my best trapper be crippled all next winter when the game is out looking for him.”

  Peals of laughter rang out as trappers winked at one another, enjoying the joke. They slapped each other on the back, because most of them shared the same dream.

  “Besides, the doc needs the business,” Jake said. “Who’s next?”

  The afternoon was filled with wrestling matches and footraces between most of the men. Others were content to watch and wager or swap tales of near-death escapes from bears and hostile Indians.

  As the sun glowed crimson on the horizon, men began cutting each other’s hair and lining up for the hotel’s outdoor bathtubs. Some shaved while others kept their beards but gave them a good trim. Wagering was already in progress for the next day’s schedule of shooting matches and horse races. Liquor was freely passed around, and as the shadows grew longer, the tales became taller.

  The men had drawn lots, and Jake was one of the first men in line for a hot bath in the four tubs. His gun and knife within easy reach, he lavished in the long, wooden tub of steaming, soapy water. He soaked all the travel smells and dirt away and washed his freshly- trimmed hair with lather from a bar of lye soap. Rinsing off with a bucket of clean water so cold that it made goosebumps on his skin, he felt invigorated. His toilet accomplished, he dressed in new buckskin, its fawn coloring a far cry from his dark and travel-stained set he had worn into the settlement.

  As he pulled the shirt over his clean-shaven face, his thoughts returned to the green-eyed lady. He tried to dismiss her from his mind, but she kept surfacing. He visualized her in his arms, all soft and womanly, and hugged himself as if she were there with him, her young and willing body pressed against his. He winced in pain when he clasped his sore ribs, bringing him back to reality. Thankful that she disappeared for the moment from his mind, he sauntered over to the trading post, grabbed a bottle of liquor for Samuel, and headed to the doctor’s office.

  Seeing Samuel’s leg and foot immobilized in a crude wooden splint, Jake hurried to him and handed him the bottle. “Never intended to maim you,” he drawled. “Hurt much?”

  “Naw.” Samuel displayed an enchanting grin on his huge face. “Take a might more ’an ’at to pain me.”

  “Anything I can do for you or get for you?” Jake extended his hand to the big man who was a little taller and of much broader girth than he.

  Samuel grasped Jake’s hand and gave it a good shake. “Ya betcha, bring me a pair of ’em boots next year jest like the ones ya got on. I ain’t gonna ’rassle ya barefoot ag’in.”

  Jake heard the doctor breathe a sigh of relief that there wouldn’t be another fight between these men in his office while Jake eyeballed a measurement of the big man’s foot. He looked up to see his brother come out of a curtained-off room in the doctor’s office. Stephen’
s face looked wet, his eyes rimmed in red.

  “What’s wrong, Stephen?” Jake asked.

  “Michael’s gone now,” Stephen mumbled, stumbling over a chair.

  The doctor hurried to the room and shoved the curtain aside.

  After a moment, Jake watched the doctor pull the tattered sheet up to cover the face of a still form lying there and guessed it to be the husband of the green-eyed lady. He looked again at his half-brother’s face, able to read the loss and pain in it. He also read the anger lying beneath the pain and wondered why. He had seen this look on his brother’s face before. Jake feared for the young widow alone in town during rendezvous and knew what he had to do.

  At the hotel, he held his skinning knife to the throat of the desk clerk and demanded a key to Mrs. Strong’s room. He swore the young man to silence and threatened him with loss of life, hoping for a few minutes before the young man recovered his voice and sounded an alarm.

  Trying to imitate the stealth of his Indian friends, yet scaling the stairs two at a time, Jake reached the young woman’s room and turned the ornate key in the lock as carefully as he could, hoping the woman wouldn’t hear him.

  What luck. He beheld her sleeping figure and woke her with his hand over her mouth.

  Frightened and screaming, she fought him and bit his hand.

  Knowing her life depended on silence, he hit her beautiful face with his fist.

  “I’m so sorry, ma’am.” He watched her eyelids flutter several times before they closed. He tossed her limp form over his shoulder, covering her with the coarse muslin sheet he snatched from the bed, and sprinted to the livery. They headed south on his roan.

  At the edge of town, he heard a roar of voices behind him and urged his horse into a run. After a few miles, he slowed the horse to a walk. No one would look in this direction for him. They would expect him to head for the river to the north.

  He looked down at the muslin-clad body, draped over the roan’s withers, and reflected on why this petite, green-eyed lady intrigued him so. He lifted the pliable woman and cradled her in his arms, hoping she would be more comfortable as they rode. He pushed strands of her auburn hair from her delicate features. Wishing he could wake her and tell her how much he yearned for her, he smiled as he envisioned this. Me, telling this woman I love her? Realizing how incredulous the statement, his smile turned to a smirk. He wanted to possess her body. That was all.

  Partially undressed for an afternoon nap, she breathed in light slumber, her breasts rising and falling. Jake squeezed on the horse’s reins, fondling the supple leather instead of doing the same to the sleeping woman.

  “Mrs. Strong,” Jake whispered. “I’m struggling to be a gentleman here.”

  She snuggled then into his broad chest, moaning in her sleep, while Jake took a deep, halting breath and shifted the coarse muslin to cover her smooth, bare skin. A break in the timber allowed him his first glimpse of the night stars, materializing in the dusky, charcoal sky. The stars would be much brighter soon when the sky blackened for night. He pressed the roan’s sides with his knees, and the horse stopped, awaiting a new command. After surveying the clearing, Jake pressed again. They rode farther into the open until they were within hollering distance of a small, log cabin with inviting yellow lights streaming from its open shutters. The Campbell place, Jake thought, having heard Mrs. Campbell was the only respectable white woman in this bend of the river.

  “Yo, the cabin,” Jake called, trying not to wake his passenger.

  “Who goes?” The man who called back came to the door, armed with a flintlock rifle, cocked and pointed right at Jake.

  “It’s Jake.” Few on the frontier knew his last name.

  “Big Jake!” A young boy peered around his father’s pant legs.

  “Jake, from the river,” another boy yelled, excitement in his young voice. “It’s Trader Jake.”

  “Come on in,” the man called. “My name’s Campbell.”

  “Much obliged.” Jake shifted his sleeping bundle as he rode closer. He hoped to be far away before Mrs. Strong became fully awake. Plenty of helping hands transferred the unknowing woman from horseback to a pallet of corn shucks, covered with coarse homespun. He shushed the family members so as not to wake her as they made her comfortable in a tiny alcove of the log cabin.

  Standing in front of an empty fireplace fashioned of native stone, Jake pondered his answers to the questions forthcoming. Deciding to take the initiative, he turned to the family to spin a tale. He reconsidered, deciding honesty might be best and plunged into telling them the truth.

  “Do you know a Michael Strong in these parts?”

  “Sure do.”

  “Well, this is his wife who’s come out here to join him.”

  “Strong was on his way to meet her at the ferry,” Campbell said.

  “Well, he never made it. Owens and I brought her into the settlement. That’s when we found Strong over at Doc’s with a bullet hole in him and unconscious.”

  The entire Campbell family held their breaths and waited for the outcome. Gunshot wounds were a way of life in their world.

  “She was plumb worn out,” Jake continued, “and asleep at the hotel when he died. She doesn’t know he’s dead. I’m afraid you’ll have to tell her. I tried to, but I had to get her out of there, what with the rendezvous going on and everything. It’d be no safe place for an unattached woman, widow or no.”

  “Oh, my goodness, yes,” Mrs. Campbell said.

  “Why, that woman wouldn’t have been safe,” Mr. Campbell said. Looking around at his children, he added, “She’d have been kidnapped or somethin’ awful.”

  “True.” Jake extended his right hand. “Pleased to meet you, Campbell.”

  “Same here.” Campbell gave Jake a hearty shake and a wide grin. “She’s mighty welcome to stay here a spell. Ma would love the company.”

  “Land sakes, I surely would. She’s such a pretty thing, too.” Mrs. Campbell brought Jake a steaming cup of strong coffee. “Can I fix you something to eat while you tell us more?”

  “Much obliged, but no.” Jake accepted the beverage from Mrs. Campbell’s calloused hands. “I’ve got to get back, but if you all would keep her safe until she can make arrangements to go back east, I’d be grateful. When she wakes up, tell her I’ll make sure her belongings stay in good hands at the hotel until she leaves and heads back to civilization.”

  Jake shushed the boys again when they clamored for him to stay and tell them tales of his travels, wanting to know all about his fleet of ships and the foreign, exotic places he encountered. He looked into their expectant faces and realized he couldn’t say no. After motioning them to follow him, he took them out of earshot of the cabin. He regaled them for a time with tales of faraway lands and beautiful places, their starlit, wide-eyed silhouettes eager to learn more of the vast and mysterious world.

  Chapter Four

  The crinkly sound of dried corn shucks greeted Belle when she moved about, trying to wake up. It was then that she noticed a soft, featherbed pallet on top of the corn-shuck mattress, the bed on which she now lay.

  I went to sleep in a different bed. She sat up, giving her head a shake to remove the fuzziness.

  “Aay-ah,” she yelped when pain shot through her left cheek. She reached up to rub it, but it was too tender. She recalled Trader Jake’s fist coming toward her face. Angered, she looked for him and saw instead a sea of unfamiliar faces.

  “She’s wakin’ up, Ma,” several young voices chorused. From short to tall, like stair steps, children ringed three sides of the bed.

  Thank goodness, the head of the bed is against the wall, or I would be surrounded. Belle’s mood softened because of the smiling, elfin faces. “Where am I?”

  “The Campbell place,” the tallest child said and each child, in turn, recited his or her name.

  The stair steps speak.

  “Go on now, children, you can visit with Mrs. Strong later,” a woman said, her kind voice at Belle’s side
. She offered Belle a bowl of stew.

  “Thank you, no,” Belle said, assuming she was speaking to Mrs. Campbell. “Where am I and, more importantly, why am I here?”

  “Just wait,” Mrs. Campbell said. “My name’s Margaret, and I’ll explain everything. But first, you get some food down you. No answers until you eat.”

  “This smells wonderful,” Belle said, between bites. “How did you know I was hungry?”

  “Didn’t know for sure if you were, but I figured your babe was.” She winked.

  “How? No one knows,” Belle blurted out. “How did you know I was with child?”

  “You’re starting to get that look about you—when you look even more beautiful than before, although I’d bet you’ve always been a beauty. You know, that kind of rosy glow. I can just tell,” she said, her voice authoritative. She smiled and moved her arm in a wide arc, encompassing all ten of her children. “I’ve had lots of experience.”

  Belle laughed. Grateful for the delicious stew, she took small bites, unsure of the extent of injury to her cheek.

  Margaret continued to chatter as she picked up two infants at once and let them nurse. “Glad I never had triplets.” She chuckled.

  When Belle finished the stew and set the bowl down, Margaret placed one of the infants in Belle’s arms. “You’re going to need something to hold on to.”

  Belle received the tiny bundle with caution, never having held a child so young. She looked into the older woman’s eyes.

  After Margaret relayed the grievous message, Belle began to weep, clutching the infant to her breast. “What am I going to do?”

  “Shh… One thing at a time.” Margaret tried to comfort her. “Decisions come tomorrow, or maybe later than that. Tonight, you deal only with the grief.” She placed her unencumbered arm around Belle’s shoulders.