Wagon Train Sweetheart (Journey West 2)

by Lacy Williams

  “I see he’s moved on and found a new friend,” Nathan said quietly.

  The dog stretched up and swiped his tongue across Emma’s chin. “No, never!” she said, still laughing, as she pushed the dog away.

  It sat in the small space between Emma and Nathan, looking between them with an expression of joy that only a dog could make, its tail sweeping the ground behind it.

  “What is his name?” Emma asked, hoping to draw Nathan into conversation. “I’ve been calling him Scamp, as I didn’t know what you’d called him.”

  Rachel looked on curiously. Ben and Abby had their heads bent together, whispering furiously, and Mr. Bingham was nodding off above his plate.

  “Didn’t give him one.” Nathan returned to his supper. His plate was almost empty now.

  “A dog has to have a name,” she protested.

  Nathan shrugged. “It’s just a mutt.”

  “Emma has an affinity for abandoned animals,” Rachel put in.

  Nathan’s eyes came to rest on her and heat flooded Emma’s cheeks. But he didn’t ask, so she said, “It’s true, I’m afraid. We had a dog when I was very young—”

  “And the kittens,” Rachel interrupted. “Not to mention the squirrel, two baby birds and once a rabbit…”

  “And now a man,” Nathan murmured.

  She didn’t know if he meant her to hear the words. He’d gone after the last few bites of his plate, again with his head down and face hidden behind the curtains of his long, dark hair.

  Did he think she pitied him? That wasn’t it at all. She believed he deserved to be treated fairly, that was all. Just like everyone did. No one should have to eat their supper alone in the dark, like an outcast. No one should be accused without evidence, as Nathan had.

  And everyone deserved a friend, right?

  A moving shadow between the two wagons caught Emma’s eye. She recognized Clara as the disguised woman did her best to blend into the darkness. Clara usually ate with the Morrisons, but if she was here, she might need something.

  How could Emma extricate herself from the campfire to check on her friend?

  Unfortunately, Nathan’s head came up and his focus went to Clara with the precision of the tracker that he was.

  “That’s my friend Clar-ence.” Emma stumbled slightly over the name. She pushed up from her seat, dusting off her skirt and hoping her companions would blame the fire for the brightness in her cheeks. She was uncomfortable covering up the ruse Clara had concocted. “I’ll just see what he wants.”

  She felt the intensity of both Nathan’s and Ben’s gazes as she hurried over to her friend. She was careful to stand just so, blocking Clara from their sight.

  “Is something the matter?”

  “I’ve torn my last shirt,” Clara whispered.

  Emma squinted in the shadowed darkness. Sure enough, beneath the slicker Clara wore, she appeared to be wearing a nightshirt with her trousers.

  “I can stitch it up, but it’s a pretty bad rip. And I need to borrow something to wear tomorrow…”

  Emma’s eyebrows went up as she comprehended her friend’s predicament, but before she could offer a solution, Clara’s hand tightened on her wrist. Emma looked over her shoulder to see Nathan approaching, his empty plate dangling from his fingers.

  Was he ready to retire for the night?

  She was stuck there between Nathan’s sharp eyes and Clara, who seemed to want to shrink into the shadows, when a voice rang out.

  “Hewitt, I need to talk to you.”

  Both Nathan and Clara went still.

  James Stillwell joined their circle, nodding to Rachel and Bingham, who had roused at his loud greeting. Mr. Stillwell’s glittering gaze swept over Nathan, Emma and Clara and held for a moment too long. Clara panted softly in Emma’s ear, while Nathan stood stiff, shoulders rigid.

  Was Nathan right? Did Stillwell have a grudge against him in particular? She’d intended to argue on Stillwell’s behalf until she’d remembered when he’d slapped Nathan across the face when Nathan had collapsed. It had seemed unkind to her.

  “You got a minute, Ben?” Stillwell asked, finally turning away from where the three of them stood. “There’s a problem…”

  Ben stood, leaving Abby to her father’s care.

  “I suppose its time to clean up, anyway,” Rachel said, the words more a complaint than an acknowledgment as she stood.

  Emma was afraid Nathan would disappear into the darkness. She knew his cough lingered and didn’t want him sleeping out in the cool night air, not yet.

  “I’ll bring you something of Ben’s in the morning,” Emma told Clara quickly, then moved to intercept Nathan.

  As Emma turned away, Clara was left in the glow of the firelight, and her coat flapped open on one side, revealing the girth of her stomach. She quickly strode away into the darkness, but as Emma took a step toward Nathan, his pensive gaze remained on the spot where the other woman had disappeared.

  Surely he couldn’t have seen through Clara’s disguise in that one moment, could he? Nathan was intelligent and watchful. She could well imagine that he might notice Clara’s condition when the Morrisons and Emma’s own family hadn’t.

  “Are you ready to retire?” Emma asked, her words tumbling one over another in her haste to distract his attention from thoughts of Clara. “You’ll bed down in the wagon again.”

  He didn’t grumble, as Ben might’ve, but accepted her demand without argument. Which perhaps told her more about his condition than he would ever say aloud.

  Sleep was a long time coming after she had joined Rachel and Ben in the family tent near the wagon. That moment in the shadowed darkness repeated in her mind.

  Had Nathan seen through Clara’s disguise?

  * * *

  Nathan startled awake to an unfamiliar sound, his breathing harsh in the early-morning stillness.

  What was it?

  His chest burned, and the fiery poker stabbing him with each inhale brought him to full awareness. He was in the Hewitts’ wagon, its white canvas cover gray above him in the darkness. A corner of a crate poked into his lower back. Smells of coffee and flour roused him. His illness lingered; he could feel it in the heaviness in his limbs, the fire in his chest.

  It was light enough he could see his breath puff out above him in a white cloud. Cold in the not-quite-dawn, he was grateful to be tucked in warm with the quilted blanket Emma had forced on him last night.

  Emma.

  The sound came again, and he sat up, careful not to rustle the blanket too much and scare off whoever was outside the wagon.

  It sounded like bells tinkling, or a long-forgotten hymn he’d heard sung from inside a church when he’d been a very young boy, hiding outside the structure on a bright Sunday morning.

  It sounded like joy.

  Someone was humming.

  The back flap had been closed for the night, and he hooked one finger around the quarter-size opening and tugged, ever so slightly. The canvas gave, the opening widened. Not all the way. Just enough for him to see Emma’s profile in the predawn light.

  Her head was bent toward the ground, her golden hair spilling down over her shoulders, down her back.

  He swallowed. Hard.

  She ran a brush through her silky locks, still humming a tune he could almost recognize, unaware that he watched her.

  Against the darker silhouettes of scrub brush and prairie in the distance, she was so beautiful that it made him ache from the inside out. Her features, her form…her heart.

  Anybody could see it. Why else would she have offered someone like him—an outcast—kindness, as she had done? Why would she have befriended Clarence—whom Nathan had some suspicions about—if not for her kind heart? Why help all the overburdened young mothers with sick children?
<
br />   Why tell him he could be forgiven?

  He’d never met anyone like her. Or rather…women like her stayed far, far away from the likes of him.

  She made him remember things, want things that he hadn’t thought about in years. Watching her with her brother and sister, the easy camaraderie they shared, how well they knew each other, and loved each other…

  He missed Beth with the same intensity as when she’d just passed.

  He should make some kind of noise. Let Emma know he was awake.

  Who was he kidding? He should get down out of the wagon and walk away, never look back.

  But something held him immobile as he watched her separate the waterfall of her hair into three parts and slowly tuck the parts into a long plait.

  With the fall of her hair out of his way, his sharp tracker’s eyes picked up the straight line of her jaw, the slope of her cheek and little upturn at the end of her nose. Her eyes were downcast, the curl of her dark lashes shadowing her cheek, hiding the clear blue depths.

  Depths that didn’t throw accusation or revulsion or derision when she looked at him. Only a gentle friendship that he didn’t know what to do with.

  He wasn’t the man she thought he was. Yesterday, he’d overheard her defend him to her brother, but what she thought about him wasn’t true. He had plenty of dark things in his past. Things he wasn’t proud of.

  Things that Beth would be ashamed to know he’d done.

  A sudden fit of coughing took him and he ducked away from the canvas, deeper into the wagon.

  He heard movement from outside the wagon, the rustling of clothes. Probably Emma’s dress.

  He went hot. Would she figure out he’d been watching her?

  He couldn’t stop coughing, even when it felt as if an entire lung lodged in his throat. Then Emma was there, undoing the canvas cover from the outside and thrusting a dipper of cool water into his hand.

  He took a breath and a sip. The icy water soothed his throat enough that he stopped coughing, at least for the moment.

  The concern on her expression made the poker of fire in his chest burn hotter. The sky behind her turned blue and it made her eyes—and whatever was in their depths—shine brighter.

  “Woke up to ice on the water bucket this morning,” was all she said. Then, “Are you still fevering? Your cheeks are flushed…”

  She stepped up onto a crate on the ground at the foot of the wagon bed and reached up to touch his forehead with the back of her wrist.

  He flinched away, unable to keep himself from shrinking at the innocent touch.

  He didn’t have a fever. He was embarrassed that she’d caught—or almost caught—him spying on her.

  “I’m fine,” he said, a touch too sharply.

  * * *

  Emma watched for a clue to Nathan’s condition in his expression. His face revealed nothing, only stern lines and handsome planes.

  But his eyes were another matter entirely. Several unreadable emotions flickered through the onyx depths before he lowered his gaze and cut off her view.

  “I’m fine,” he said gruffly.

  When it was plain as day from the pallor beneath his flushed cheeks and his hacking cough that he was anything but.

  He swung one massive, booted foot over the wagon bed and she moved out of his way as he clambered down.

  “I hope you’ll use the sense that God gave you and ride in the wagon again today.” She wasn’t sure where that stern, bossy tone had come from. She would never have dared speak to one of Ben’s friends that way. But it was still clear to see that Nathan was ill, gravely so.

  He didn’t respond, only slid her a sideways look as he stalked off between the wagons and outside the circle.

  When he returned, white-faced and bracing himself against the wagon with one hand, as if he’d suffered another coughing spell, she was bent over a young girl who’d suffered a serious cut on her hand.

  The little girl sat on her mother’s lap and cried out as Emma tried to pry her fist open and get a look at her palm. She began struggling in her mother’s arms and Emma was forced to sit back as the mother whispered for the girl to behave while she wrestled her to stillness in her lap.

  By the fire, Rachel had finished frying up the salt pork and eggs and was ready to dish them out, though Mr. Bingham and Abby hadn’t made an appearance yet. Familiar noises from nearby meant that Ben was likely tearing down the family tent and stowing it away.

  “Sit and eat,” Emma told Nathan. Ordered.

  His clenched jaw and stormy dark eyes told her he wanted to protest, but he silently strode to the fire and accepted the plate Rachel extended him.

  He sent Emma a baleful glance as he did so.

  “You’d just as soon give over,” Rachel said quietly, but not so quietly that Emma couldn’t hear her as she went back to doctoring the girl. “When Emma gets her mind set on something, she’s stubborn.”

  From the corner of her eye, she saw the inscrutable look he threw in her direction, and her cheeks heated. She bent over the little girl’s hand with renewed attention. The girl finally opened her hand and Emma got a look at the angry red line that scored her palm.

  It was true. Hadn’t she told him so herself, when she’d said she never gave up?

  But something had changed between them since that first dark night he’d passed in their wagon. A friendship had been forged, but it was more than that. At least for her. She’d seen a glimpse of the lonely, intelligent man beneath Nathan’s harsh exterior. She hated that he had been cast to the fringes of the caravan. It wasn’t fair to him.

  The little girl cried out again as Emma attempted to clean out her cut with a washrag soaked with antiseptic.

  “I know it stings,” Emma said softly. “But it’s important to clean out your cut.”

  Terribly important. The danger of infection out in the wilds like this was serious.

  But the little girl didn’t listen. She snatched her hand back with a loud, “No!”

  Scamp, the little dog she’d named last night, sidled up to Nathan with a hopeful doggy smile turned up to the man.

  The girl’s eyes flicked in that direction. Nathan’s face was turned down to his plate, shoulders hunched as if he was trying to make himself invisible. Had he even noticed the girl’s interest?

  The girl’s mother continued to whisper to her, insisting she sit still while Emma worked on her hand. The girl sniffled, her eyes still on the dog. Emma waited.

  The dog whined, a piteous sound.

  Then Emma thought she heard Nathan whisper something and the dog dropped to the ground, its paw extended toward the man as if to play. Had Nathan told the dog to do so?

  The little girl’s chin turned toward the pair and Emma used the opportunity to grasp her wrist and bathe the cut with the antiseptic.

  The girl flinched and opened her mouth as if she were ready to cry out again, but at the same moment Nathan tossed a piece of pork and the dog leaped into the air and caught it.

  This time Emma was sure she heard Nathan give the dog a command. She heard a flurry of movement, but she kept her gaze on her task and wrapped the girl’s hand in a clean, white cloth and tied it off. Nathan and Scamp had distracted her now-giggling patient enough for Emma to finish the job.

  Even Rachel giggled, but Emma looked up too late to see what had happened.

  Nathan ducked his head and kept his gaze on his empty plate. The dog sat at his feet, tail sweeping the ground.

  “All done,” Emma said to the girl and her mother. She gave instructions and tried to impart the importance of keeping the wound from becoming infected. The bugle blew as they left the Hewitts’ campfire. It was time to pack up. The wagon train was moving out again.

  “Thank you,” Emma said aside to Nathan as she picked up the cloth a
nd antiseptic bottle. She was careful with their medical supplies, hoping she wouldn’t need most of them before they reached Oregon.

  He shrugged, his head still down.

  But she knew what he had done. Even if he wouldn’t admit to it.

  Spotting Clara at the Morrisons’ wagon, Emma couldn’t help but notice her friend’s white complexion beneath the hat mashed on her head. She hadn’t been like that when Emma had rushed through the camp before dawn to deliver one of Ben’s shirts to Clara.

  Had Clara been sick again this morning? She was well into her second trimester, well past the time when she should be getting so violently ill. But then, she was taking the trail all on her own steam. It was grueling travel, and then caring for the animals on top of it all.

  Conscious of Nathan’s presence nearby, Emma knew she didn’t dare go and check on her friend. While Rachel might be caught up in chattering with Abby, Emma knew that her actions wouldn’t go unnoticed by the trapper.

  Emma determined to check on her friend later.

  When Emma glanced at Nathan, his gaze was also fixed on Clara.

  Finally, Ben peered around the front edge of the wagon. “Ready, sisters?”

  “Just about,” Emma replied.

  “Reed, Emma says you’re in the wagon again.”

  Nathan didn’t argue. He looked fatigued just from sitting up to eat.

  He said nothing, but stood and strode to the wagon. His little dog had disappeared.

  Emma accepted the breakfast skillet from Rachel, who waggled her eyebrows, and took it to the wagon to stow it inside for the day’s journey.

  Nathan was already inside, staring into the canvas. His clenched jaw made him seem angry.

  In fact, he didn’t acknowledge her at all.

  Had she offended him somehow? They’d barely spoken this morning. She’d been worried over his flushed cheeks when she’d first seen him, but she didn’t think his fever had returned.

  “Is there anything you need? More reading material?”

  He still didn’t look at her, but shook his head minutely.