by Eden Carson
Untamed Journey
By Eden Carson
Text Copyright © 2012 Eden Carson
All Rights Reserved
Cover Art by Michelle Alfieri
Smashwords Edition
To mom
You’ve given me joy, love, and inspiration every single day. You’re my rock.
And many thanks to my editors for all their dedication and long hours:
Ann, Aré, Carole, Erin, Heather, and Linda.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Epilogue
Chapter 1
Ruth stood motionless while her Aunt Kate did her best to pinch some life back into her pale cheeks. Ruth hadn’t been able to sleep or eat for three days. Not since her aunt had gleefully announced Ruth’s engagement, over afternoon tea, to a stranger twice her age. No wonder her aunt had splurged on sugar for their tea, Ruth thought, looking back to that dreary afternoon.
Kate had apparently fetched a good price for her niece’s virginity.
“You‘re too thin by half, Ruthie, girl. And I look ten years older than my years, damn that fool’s War.” Kate frowned at her own reflection in the hotel’s looking glass.
Ruth brushed her aunt’s manicured hands away, as mention of the war that took her family from her brought the color into her cheeks that her aunt’s rough fingers had failed to pull up. “My father, your brother, fought for a just cause – to protect our way of life. How can you talk like that?” Ruth snatched the blue bonnet out of her aunt’s hands and pretended interest in her reflection in the mirror. Ruth saw her Aunt Kate’s eyes narrow in warning.
“That War was started to make a profit on bullets and guns and human misery,” Kate retorted. “Every cotton mill owner from here to New York now owns the land and cotton with no middle man to reduce their profits. You need to grow up, Ruthie, and face reality. The War was about money and power and nothing else. Just like every war before it was and just like every war after will be. You should be exceedingly grateful to me for landing you a wealthy husband. Living through this War in poverty should have given you a better appreciation for living the next one in money.”
Ruth turned her emerald green eyes on her only living relative and tried to curb her temper. She had no one left, after all, but she‘d never believe her father and brother had died for nothing. “How can you say that? Papa believed in saving our way of life, our honor, our freedom. He didn’t fight for money, and neither did my brother. That was your way of life, too, before you moved up here.”
Her aunt scoffed as she pulled a cracked horsehair brush roughly through Ruth’s rich brown hair. “Being from the South never brought me anything but pain and hardship. Your father, God rest his soul, was a fool and an idealist when the men folk stirred themselves up over pride and anger. He chose to be blind to the truth because he didn’t have the strength to go against the town. He should have stayed behind and protected his women and our family farm. Instead that fool got himself killed before firing a shot. And then took your brother with him.”
Ruth’s head whipped around at her aunt’s words. “That’s a lie.” Ruth pulled away from her aunt’s none too gentle ministrations and started braiding her own hair. “My father fought bravely and died in battle.”
Aunt Kate busied herself fussing with her own henna-dyed curls. “No, you silly girl. Your father died of dysentery two days before a shot was fired, believing in his own foolishness as he lay dying in his own filth. Your mother coddled you and told you a sweet lie to spare you.”
Ruth paled in the mirror, shutting out the sound of her aunt’s voice. She didn’t know if what her aunt said was truth or lie. Kate always told enough of both that Ruth was never sure of anything, except her aunt’s unswerving ambition and greed. The truth was, Ruth’s father and mother were too kind-hearted to cut off Papa’s only sister from family gatherings, but both struggled to muster any true affection for this woman. Having lived under her roof, under her control, Ruth now fully understood why.
Ruth was startled out of her reverie when a knock sounded on the door of the grand hotel room she and her aunt had shared for the last two nights. Aunt Kate had the door open and a smile on her face – probably the first genuine smile she‘d seen on her aunt’s too thin face since Kate reluctantly took her in two years ago.
“Why, Mr. Smith. How nice to see you again. Please, come in. Or would it be bad luck for the proxy groom to see the bride before the wedding?” Aunt Kate’s smile turned into a full-fledged laugh at her own cleverness. Jasper Smith joined her, two like-minded souls sharing a laugh at Ruth’s expense.
Ruth had managed to survive the death of her family, near starvation, and more nights hiding in the woods from marauding soldiers and thieves than she cared to remember – all before her sixteenth birthday, when she appeared on her aunt’s doorstep, skinny as a rail. She had endured all this with strength and fortitude and a spark of hope that life would turn around, someday, somehow. But being sold by her own flesh and blood to a perfect stranger smothered that bit of joy like the War between the States never had.
Ruth pretended indifference to the leers Jasper Smith was giving her, as if he‘d be sharing her body this night, instead of her unknown husband. Thank God they had a ten-day journey before that day came, she thought in near panic.
Jasper Smith finally had the decency to look at her face once he‘d stopped laughing. “Well, Miss, are you ready yet?” He scratched at his scraggly excuse for a beard. “You’re not getting any younger or any prettier fussin’ in that there mirror.” He grinned slyly. The only thing he loved more than getting under a young miss’s skirt was getting under her skin. And this proper little southern lady was just his type, in both departments. Too bad the boss man would have her first, he thought. He’d like to see that look o
f shock the first time a man rammed between her legs.
Smith knew Frank Masterson would hurt him bad if he laid a hand on her before getting permission. And although the boss had never before minded sharing women, he’d never had a wife before, either. Men could be funny about wives and Smith might not get to touch her after all, now that he put some thought to the matter.
“We‘ll be down in a few minutes, Mr. Smith,” Kate reassured him. “A girl only gets married once, after all. Only once for the first time, that is,” Kate smiled as she met Jasper’s gaze in the mirror. “Now leave us be, so I can finish my niece’s hair.”
Smith cracked a smile again, as his eyes slowly took in Ruth’s hair, lying half-braided down her back. “Your hair looks just fine like that, to my way of thinking.” When Ruth glared at him in the bedroom mirror, he pretended chagrin at his rudeness. “No disrespect intended, Miss. I just meant that your husband would appreciate such a pretty sight. He’s a lucky man.”
“If my soon-to-be husband is so appreciative, why didn’t he come himself, instead of sending his hired hand? He’s never even met my aunt, much less me.”
“Don’t be impertinent, child,” Kate interrupted, seeing Smith’s eyes narrow. “Frank Masterson is an important and busy man. You can’t expect him to stop everything in hard times like these just to sit on a train for two weeks, making chit chat with you.”
“He’s too busy to protect me, even?” Ruth retorted. “You saw the headlines this morning. There’ve been three train robberies in as many weeks since they finished the transcontinental line. One of the passengers was killed!”
“Don’t you worry, none, little lady,” Smith said, patting his holstered revolver. “I’m all the protection you need.”
But who would protect her from Jasper Smith, Ruth wondered, shivering before she could hide the weakness from his watchful gaze. She bit her tongue and lowered her green eyes as her aunt tugged forcefully on her half-formed braid.
“You see?” Kate said. “You’ll be just fine with a strong man like Mr. Smith to guard you.”
Smith tipped his hat at the compliment, wondering if he could scare the girl into silence if he took her before the wedding. But then the thought of Masterson’s reaction at the last man to cross him put enough fear into Smith’s tiny heart to make him content to find a whore tonight after he stood proxy. No skirt was worth a slow, painful death.
“I’ll see you ladies downstairs at the altar, then.” Smith tipped his hat to Ruth’s hostile stare before turning and leaving, pulling the hotel door shut firmly behind him and dangerous temptation.
Ruth started breathing again at the click of the door closing. She did not like or trust the man her future husband sent to protect her on the trip through the Colorado Territory. She didn’t like the excuse her aunt had made any better, claiming Masterson’s work was more important than picking the future mother of his children. If her fiancé were so concerned with Ruth’s well-being, why hadn’t he come himself? Ruth asked herself once again. Granted, he was nearing fifty, but no one had said anything about the man being in poor health. Ruth was sure her aunt would have pounced on that tidbit and offered to deliver Ruth to the man herself, Indians and outlaws be-damned, if a will reading were forthcoming. The opportunity to have a rich, widowed niece under her control would have Kate herself nailing the coffin lid shut just to hurry things along.
Ruth forced her gaze back to the cloudy mirror to finish her hair. Useless imaginings would get her nowhere.
She had one choice, and one choice only - to face her future and take things as they came, one day at a time. He might not be so bad after all. She had to hold onto that thought or lose what sanity she had left. There were no alternatives. She was educated, but not impressively so. There were hundreds of impoverished girls out there better suited to be someone’s governess. Her father had taught her practical things in the years before the War. She could splint a broken leg or stitch a man’s arm together, but couldn’t speak more than a handful of French. And she didn’t know the right families if she did. She was a Southerner, and no one would let her teach their Northern-born children.
Ruth knew her aunt would never take her back if Ruth brought them so close to their former lifestyle, then threw it all away on what her aunt would consider childish misgivings.
Only Ruth hadn’t been a child for many years now, and her instincts were screaming at her to leave, run far away, anywhere but into the arms of a perfect stranger.
Chapter 2
Beauregard Jackson’s instincts went from quiet to screaming in an instant, causing him to roll headlong down a six foot slope, desperate for cover. The rusty hatchet missed his scalp by a mere three inches, slicing clean through a prickly pear before embedding itself soundly in a dying Juniper. Jackson got two wild shots off with his pistol before rolling to his feet at the bottom of the sandy gulch. The owner of the hatchet took one bullet in the arm without flinching, and barreled into Jackson, knocking him to the ground again.
Jackson’s opponent was a bear of a man, and the lawman struggled against the greater weight, bucking as soon as he felt the man’s weight at his back. Jackson rolled just in time to maneuver on top, pinning the man to the ground by his wounded arm, bearing down with all two hundred pounds of his strength on the fresh bullet wound.
The man screamed his agony and outrage, then nearly dislodged Jackson by brute strength alone. Jackson regained his balance and shoved his left knee into his opponent’s thick neck, immobilizing him for the two precious seconds he needed to pull his hunting knife free and slit the man’s throat.
After meticulously cleaning the blood from his hunting knife, Jackson began riffling through the dead man’s clothing. Aside from a tin of dried out chewing tobacco and spare bullets, he found nothing to indicate where the outlaw and his friends were headed. Jackson recognized the dead man, though. His size alone narrowed his identity – there weren’t many men over six feet and two hundred and fifty pounds in Colorado Territory. Jackson rolled the man over onto his back and got a good look at his left wrist. The scar Jackson himself had given the man eighteen months past confirmed the lawman’s instincts were right. Roy Grafton - long-time child-slaver and whoremaster - had expanded his business into armed robbery.
Jackson shrugged out of his faded Confederate coat and replaced it with the dead man’s tattered vest. Wearing clothes with the familiar scent of its master allowed Jackson to approach the outlaw’s horse with little fuss and noise.
He silently stroked the piebald’s nose, out of habit, but the horse was calm and unimpressed with the stranger going through the saddlebags. Jackson figured the dead man was not the mare’s first owner, and gunshots were probably second nature to her with that brute riding her back.
After emptying the saddlebags, Jackson’s luck improved. Shoved in the very bottom was a carefully folded piece of paper with a crudely drawn map of the territory – with every train track for a hundred miles scratched in. There was no writing to be found, just scratch marks and dates at various points along the railroad tracks. He noted that there were none near any towns or depots, and, in fact, most were as far away from help as possible. He had an idea what this meant, but would wait until he met up with his long-time partner, Old Mike, before changing their plans.
Jackson left the stolen horse behind, but did loosen her tether. He couldn’t risk bringing her along and having her nicker in greeting to the horses of the other gang riders, giving his location away. He hated leaving her behind, but if she were smart, she’d back-track the way she had come. Or better yet, find herself a band of wild horses to join. At least it was autumn and the heat of the summer had passed. There was water in the mountains and the mare was well fed. Good luck, sweet thing, he thought, as he swatted her backside.
After back-tracking nearly a mile to his own mount, Jackson settled in for a long night of one-hour bouts of sleep. He learned during the War how to wake himself on any schedule he chose. He’d also learned sleep depriv
ation could bring a man down with less trouble than a bullet. When their scout didn’t return, the rest of the outlaws would get nervous, wondering if he’d been taken by Indians, wild animals, or the Law. Jackson had no intention of launching a frontal attack on a group that large. But he could wear them out a bit tonight, making certain they got less sleep than he did.
After circling the outlaws’ camp for nearly a quarter hour, Jackson settled in to take a few shots. After five minutes, he carefully backed away into the dark and found another spot to doze for his allotted hour. Sixty minutes later, Jackson effortlessly roused himself and took aim once more. He didn’t hit anyone, but he made sure not one man got a decent night’s sleep. Once he caught up with the rest of the lawmen the railroad had hired, the outlaws would be easy targets - careless and slow to react to the direct attack the posse’s larger numbers could support.
Chapter 3
After tucking her last piece of well-worn clothing into the satchel Jasper Smith had provided, Ruth hesitated to close the bag. She couldn’t breathe easy with the picture in her mind of Jasper Smith being her only companion and protector for the next two weeks – Then straight into the arms of a man she knew next to nothing about.
Ruth sat on the edge of the bed, stroking the satin coverlet. She ached remembering the feel of her mother’s favorite cotton quilt – the one that had lain on her bed for as long as Ruth could remember. She missed her parents so much she could barely keep from crying. If only her mama were here to tell her what to do, she thought. Or Papa – he always saw the bright side of things, and could just as easily patch up a broken heart with a joke or tall tale as he could set a child’s broken arm.
Ruth wandered over to the window. She wondered if it would be pure suicide to try and shimmy down the vines alongside her window in petticoats and lace. She smiled – she’d no doubt just break her leg and have to set it herself. And then she’d really be trapped in the lone company of Jasper Smith.
