He stood and reached out his hand, but she waved it away. “I am not helpless.”
“Like hell.” He stepped in, caught the leather belt around her waist and hauled her to her feet. “Want me to walk you over behind a bush?”
“Certainly not.” She took a step and her knees buckled.
Brand didn’t say a word, just marched her over to a huckleberry bush. He thought about unbuttoning her jeans for her, but gave up the idea when she glared at him and shooed him away.
While she was occupied he packed up the camp, saddled the horses and stowed her bedroll and saddlebag. “Ready to ride?” he asked when she reappeared.
“Of course not. I have not yet washed my face.”
He gestured toward the rippling creek. “There’s the stream.”
She stood for a long moment eyeing the water, and he could hear the wheels turning in her head. Finally she lifted her slim shoulders in a shrug and shook her head. She’d braided her hair while she’d been behind the bush. Good move. He handed over her wide-brimmed hat.
“Which way are we goin’? West? Or back to Fort Hall?”
“West,” she said through her teeth. “I am not a quitter.”
“Never said you were. Just givin’ you a choice.”
“I choose to go on.”
Brand nodded, manhandled her over to the horse, grabbed her around the waist and lifted her into the saddle. Sure didn’t weigh much.
With a sharp intake of breath, she clutched the saddle horn and leaned over it. Guess it hurt her to straighten up all the way. He kinda felt sorry for her since he didn’t plan to slow the pace today. Or any other day. Served her right, getting herself involved with a man she hardly knew.
* * *
Today, Suzannah decided, was even worse than yesterday. After ten minutes on horseback, her body rebelled; after six hours in the saddle she suspected she would not survive this journey. Why, why had John not accepted her father’s offer? Surely being part owner of a plantation was an honorable calling? Had he done so, she would now be safe and comfortable at home and John would be joining her in South Carolina for Christmas, not the other way around.
She forced herself to forget her fiancé for the moment and concentrate on riding the huge animal beneath her. Despite its size, she rather liked her horse. It didn’t talk back. Did not bark out orders. And it certainly did not disapprove of the fact that she was from the South. She detected disapproval in every comment Mr. Wyler made, when he deigned to make any at all. Which was annoyingly rare.
She wasn’t used to being ignored. She was used to being catered to, taken care of by faithful servants who had loved her from the moment of her birth. Hattie would commiserate with her over this disastrous turn of events. Imagine, her hired driver being murdered and then finding herself thrust upon this uncivilized ruffian of a Yankee army officer. A major, Colonel Clarke had said.
Only the Union Army would promote such a man. Her father’s regiment would not have stood for it. Of course Papa’s regiment had been shelled into oblivion, but even so there must be honorable men in the Union Army—just look at her John!
Before the sun had climbed halfway to noon, her shirt was sticky with perspiration and droplets of moisture rolled off her neck and dribbled down between her breasts. Even her head felt hot. She snaked off her hat and used it to fan her damp face until Major Wyler shouted at her.
“Put that damn hat back on! You want to die of sunstroke?”
“At the moment, Major, that does not seem like such a bad idea. Besides, it’s December. The sun doesn’t burn in winter.”
“It does at this altitude. Put your hat on.”
All morning he just kept clopping along ahead of her. She began to watch the way he rode. He had a loose-jointed, relaxed way of sitting on his shiny black mount, and he moved with the animal as if he was part of it.
She was making a supreme effort to keep her spine straight, as Mama had taught her, but it was an effort. Being so proper was earning her a stiff back and a sore derriere.
She was beginning to realize how different things were out here in this godforsaken country. Burning sun. Few trees. Scrawny bushes. And some kind of screechy birds that seemed to be following them.
And only the occasional creek. Already her canteen was practically empty, and surely the horses must be thirsty? She studied the baked earth as she passed over it. All at once Mr. Wyler was there beside her.
“Another hour and we’ll stop to water the horses.”
He was still worried about the horses, not the people? All she could manage was a nod. Her throat felt so dry and dust-clogged she doubted she could utter a word.
“Here.” He shoved a red bandanna into her hand. “Dust’s getting bad. Tie this over your nose and mouth.”
She did as he directed, but still he did not ride on ahead.
“Better yet, stay beside me.”
Again she nodded, and he fell in next to her. But he did not talk. Men out here were definitely not good conversationalists.
The wind picked up. Her eyes teared as flecks of dirt scratched under her lids. She dribbled the last of the water from her canteen into her cupped palm and tried to splash it into her eye sockets. He watched her for a few minutes, then ostentatiously wet his own bandanna, a blue one, with his canteen and wiped his eyes with it.
Oh.
“Don’t use too much water,” he ordered. “The stream up ahead might be dried up.”
Her spirits plummeted. “What will we do then?”
“Rest the horses and ride on.”
“When do we stop for lunch?”
He shot her a hard look. “When I say so.”
Goodness, he was gruff! She would bet the contents of her piggy bank he had never been...
“Are you married, Mr. Wyler?”
“Nope.”
“Were you ever married?”
“Nope.”
Why was she not surprised? He was the most unsociable male she had ever had the bad luck to encounter.
“The next question most folks ask is why not?”
She felt his gaze on her and she stiffened. “I see.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Very well, I will ask. Why are you not married?” And if you say it is none of my business I will scream good and loud.
“Never met a woman I couldn’t live without.”
She stifled a laugh. She would wager there had been legions of them. “Possibly the candidates felt the same,” she retorted.
His laugh startled a chattering squirrel on a pine branch.
“Possibly,” he allowed.
Suddenly he drew up and pulled a long shiny rifle from the leather scabbard at his side. “Rein in,” he murmured. “And don’t move.”
Her heart kicked hard against her rib cage. “What is it?”
“Hush up!”
Well!
He aimed the rifle at something off to the left and waited so long she thought he was just pretending. Then he squeezed the trigger, and a deafening crack sounded next to her ear. Her horse jerked and sidestepped. His did not move a single muscle.
“Supper,” he intoned. “Stay here.” He slid the gun back into the case and stepped his horse forward.
She pressed her lips together. Stay here. Go there. Do this. Do that. The man was impossible. No wonder he wasn’t married.
She watched him dismount and bend to pick up something off the ground. When he returned, a limp furry creature hung from one hand. A spot of crimson spread across its neck, and blood dripped from the wound onto the ground.
He shot her a glance and saw her shock, but he only shrugged. “Let’s move out.”
Chapter Five
Watching Suzannah out of the corner of his eye, Brand knew she was so exhausted she could barely stay in the saddle. The stream should be just over the next hill, but he wondered if she could hold on that long.
“You all right?” he ventured.
Her chin came up. “I am quite all rig
ht, thank you.”
But she was having trouble keeping her eyes open. Maybe the glare. Or maybe she was holding on with the last of her strength.
He didn’t like her much, but he had to admire her guts. Except she wouldn’t say “guts.” She’d have some fancy-ass term like courage. Or maybe perseverance. Yeah, she’d like that one. More syllables.
By the time they made camp and he’d fed the horses and wiped them down, she had settled herself beside the stream with her bare feet in the water. Her head drooped onto her bent knees. One thing he’d say about the lady from the Southern plantation, she didn’t complain. In fact, she’d hardly said a word since he shot the rabbit.
He dressed it quickly, skewered the cut-up parts on green willow sticks and propped them over the fire. Then he set the coffeepot on a flat rock close to the flames and unrolled their bedrolls.
He eyed the rippling stream. After forty miles of chaparral and up-and-down trails, he was so hot and sweaty it didn’t take but two seconds to decide on a bath.
“Gonna walk downstream a ways,” he said as he passed behind her hunched-over frame. She didn’t move, but a muffled sound came from between her knees.
“Coffee’ll be ready pretty quick. Supper, too. You hungry?”
Another sound, maybe a ladylike groan. He took it for a yes.
An hour later she was still sitting with her feet in the creek, but she’d straightened up some. He stopped beside her.
“Blisters?”
“I didn’t look. All I know is my feet feel as if I have been dancing a reel on hot coals.”
“Dry ’em off. I’ll take a look.”
“Oh, no, I—”
“Don’t argue.” He squatted beside her. “Give me your foot.”
Suzannah lifted one foot out of the water and instantly he took possession of it, running his warm hands over her instep, her toes. He bent his head and rubbed his thumb along her raw heel.
“Yep, got a blister. Big as a four-bit piece. I’ll get some liniment.” He picked up her other foot and studied that, as well. “Mighty delicate feet. I’d wager you haven’t done much walking. Got two messed-up heels.”
He rummaged in his saddlebag and returned with a bottle of brown liquid. The label said Horse Liniment. He crouched next to her, but she shrank away.
“I do not think horse liniment is a proper medicine for a human foot, Mr. Wyler.”
“Maybe not, but it’s what I’ve got. And it’s needed.” He shook the bottle and grasped her foot. “By the way, my name’s Brand. Might as well use it since we’re, uh, traveling together.” He uncorked the liniment and smoothed some over one raw heel, then the other.
“Leave your boots off for a few hours.”
A soothing warmth settled over her abraded skin, and she sighed with pleasure.
“Better?”
“Yes. Thank you.”
He rose abruptly and tramped over to the fire pit. “Come and get it.”
She hobbled the few yards to the fire, smelled the coffee and roasting meat, and tensed her stomach muscles to stop the rumbling. She’d had two desiccated biscuits at noon; now she was so hungry she could eat anything, even a... She swallowed hard. A dead rabbit. She sat near the fire and he handed her an unidentifiable hunk of roasted meat on a stick.
“Careful, it’s hot.”
“Oh, I do hope so. I do not think I could face a raw piece of rabbit.”
“You could if you were hungry enough.”
“All my life I have had plenty to eat—until the war, that is. Then we had to scrounge and improvise.”
“Yeah? What did you improvise?”
She looked off toward the pinkish-orange sky where the sun was sinking behind a mountaintop. “Coffee. We made coffee from roasted acorns. We ate all the chickens, even the rooster, and when there were no more eggs, Sam, our overseer, found birds nests with eggs in them. Quail, I think they were. After that, we ate the quail, too.”
“You ever wonder whether fighting the war made sense?”
“Yes,” she said quietly. “I wondered that every single day for four years.”
He sent her an intent look, his speared rabbit piece halfway to his mouth. Unguarded, his eyes changed from hard gray steel to something softer, dry moss, perhaps. She wondered suddenly what he saw in her face.
“You miss your life in the South?”
“Yes, I do. I guess you might say I am...a little homesick.”
“You ever wonder why you’re chasin’ all over hell and gone after a Northerner?”
She could not answer that, at least not truthfully. If John had agreed to move to South Carolina, she would not be here.
He poured two mugs of coffee and set one beside her. “Don’t answer that. Whatever the reason, you’re here now, and I’m stuck with you.”
“And I,” she said sharply, “am stuck with you. I do not like you very much, Mr. Wyler. And I am quite sure you do not like me.”
They finished their meal in silence so heavy it felt as if the air weighed more than a loaded wagon. After supper she rolled herself up in the wool blanket, rested her head on her saddle, and closed her eyes to shut out the sight of Brand Wyler.
The wind sighed through the trees. She listened for a coyote’s call so it wouldn’t startle her as it had that first night, but all she heard was the fire popping out an occasional spark. How many days must she endure this man’s company? Four hundred miles, the colonel had said. At forty miles per day, that meant ten days on the trail with Mister Gruff and Bossy.
Goodness, it had been two. In eight more days she would be completely undone.
* * *
In the morning Brand had to shake her awake. When she poked her head out of the blanket she’d burrowed in he noticed her braid had come undone; her hair curled around her face and straggled down to her shoulders. It was the color of gold and looked as soft as dandelion fluff. Made his hands itch to lace his fingers through it.
She opened her eyes, found him staring at her and popped up like a jack-in-the-box. He jerked his gaze back to the coffeepot. Her voice stopped him cold.
“We will travel another forty miles today, I assume.”
“Forty miles? You think we can ride forty miles every day?”
She blinked those unsettling green eyes. “Yes, of course. Why ever not?” She crawled out of her bedroll and stood up. “I calculated it all out last night. Four hundred miles divided by forty is ten. It will take ten days to get to Fort Klamath.”
“Like hell it will.”
Undaunted, she poured herself some coffee and stood blowing on it. A good ten minutes dragged by while he considered how to tell her the facts of life on an iffy trail through the mountains. The more he thought about it, the madder he got. This pampered greenhorn thought they could just sashay over to Fort Klamath as though it was an afternoon buggy ride? She sure as hell had a bunch of learning to do.
“Well?” she said. “You have not answered my question, Mr. Wyler. Why can’t we reach the fort in ten days?”
“You don’t have any idea what you’re up against, do you? Hell’s bells, lady, you don’t have the sense God gave a goose. You have—”
Without thinking, Suzannah dashed her coffee into his face. “A quick temper,” she said with satisfaction. The coffee dripped off his chin and soaked his shirt.
Without blinking he began to undo the buttons, then shrugged it off over his head, wadded it up and tossed it at her. “Wash it out,” he ordered. He tipped his head toward the creek.
She stared at his bare chest. He was as lean and brown as a hazelnut, with rippling muscles and not an ounce of fat anywhere.
His eyes bored into hers and her anger bubbled up anew.
“I would press it as well,” she said in a voice laden with poison, “but I did not pack a sadiron.”
“Stop talking and start washing,” he ordered. “Go on.” He gestured at the creek. “Get to it.”
Twenty minutes later she smacked the sodden bundle against hi
s chest and propped her hands at her waist. Without even blinking he unfolded the laundered shirt, shook it out and pulled it on sopping wet.
“It’ll dry,” he remarked, anticipating her comment. “Might wash your own shirt out as well,” he said. “Must be...uh...dirty.”
“It is no such thing! How dare you insinuate—”
“I’m not insinuating, I’m smelling.”
“Oh.”
She could hear him chuckle. How she detested that sound!
“Take it off,” he said. “I’ll turn my back.”
She would not undress in front of this man. But he stood in front of her, waiting, and she knew he wasn’t going to move until she did what he said. She reached one hand to her top shirt button and hesitated. The look in his eyes grew unsettlingly warm.
“Go on,” he said softly. “I know you’re wearing underclothes, and I’ve seen women’s duds before.”
“Turn around,” she said sharply.
He pivoted on one boot heel and propped his hands on his lean hips.
“You are no gentleman, Mr. Wyler,” she said to his broad back.
“I don’t have to be.”
“If you want my cooperation, it would help if you were at least polite.”
“Just for the record, Miss Cumberland, out here on the trail all I have to be is prepared for anything, and—” he started a gusty whistle between his teeth “—patient as a damn saint.”
She made quick work of rinsing out her shirt and had it buttoned back on before he finished the second verse. “That’s a song sung by some of the workers on the plantation,” she said uncomfortably.
“So?” One eyebrow quirked. “You never sang ‘Oh, Susanna’ in school?”
“Certainly not. I had tutors. Besides, I was not allowed to sing except in church.”
“Bet you didn’t have much fun growing up, didja?”
She opened her mouth, then shut it so fast her teeth clicked. No, she had not had fun. She had played with the young children on the plantation until one day Mama put a stop to it, and from then on she spent all her free time on lessons in deportment and learning how to give a proper tea party.
Dreaming of a Western Christmas: His Christmas BelleThe Cowboy of Christmas PastSnowbound with the Cowboy Page 3
