Now she felt she should accept the gentleman’s offer, but with reservation. She gave Andrews what she hoped was a modest and thankful smile, but one that did not promise anything beyond her gratitude.
He responded with a generous grin and patted her gloved hand reassuringly. “We shall be fine, you’ll see. Why, in thirty minutes we’ll be over and ready to move on.”
“I do hope you’re correct, sir,” Millie murmured.
Andrews’s expression deepened into caring concern. “My dear Mrs. Evans, I’ve longed to converse with you. Perhaps we shall have the opportunity now, and I shall be allowed to distract you from the disagreeable manner of our voyage.”
“Indeed.” Millie supposed she could stand a half hour’s conversation with him in exchange for having a robust young man standing solidly beside her during the crossing. As they stepped off the gangplank onto the ferry, he steadied her and then drew her toward the center, where the ferryman was tying down the luggage to keep the weight low in the craft. Once the coach was on solid ground again, the baggage would be reloaded in the boot and on the roof.
“Does the water frighten you?” Andrews asked.
She opened her mouth to lie and stopped short. Even in polite conversation, she was sure the Almighty would expect the truth. Still, she didn’t want this man’s overbearing sympathy. “A bit,” she managed. “But not overmuch.”
“Then let us stand in the center, near the stage. If you wish, you can hold on to the door handle for support.”
“Thank you.”
Two other gentlemen soon joined them. They held back a bit, seeming bashful in her presence, yet drawn to her. One in particular—a shopkeeper from St. Joseph, she’d learned—seemed especially determined to further his acquaintance with her.
David, on the other hand, flicked a glance her way as he boarded and turned at once toward the bow, where he stood with a couple of other men, partially concealed from Millie’s view by the lead horses’ heads.
The ferryman closed the gate on the landward side of the craft, and they started across. The current pulled at the boat, and Millie leaned a little, trying to remain steady.
Something struck the side of the ferry, and the craft lurched. The horses whinnied and shifted, and Andrews shot out his other arm to steady Millie. Behind her, the shopkeeper also reached to keep her from stumbling. Caught between them, Millie began to feel like a piece of cheese between the two halves of a biscuit.
Her cheeks heated as she pushed slowly away from them. “Thank you, gentlemen, but if you’ll excuse me, I’ll stand by the rail.”
The ferry still swayed, and she staggered between the other passengers to grasp the peeled log that formed the railing around the sides. The muddy water was only inches below her feet, and the movement of the craft prompted her to cling to the log. Her stomach heaved, and she raised her gaze quickly to the shore. The distance to the far shore was not great now. Trees swayed in the breeze, and a cluster of people awaited their arrival. No dock stood in place, just a landing where the ferryman would run one end of the craft aground. They wouldn’t need to use a gangplank, and Millie was grateful.
“I hope you’re well, ma’am.”
She gasped and looked up into David’s blue eyes.
“Quite.”
He gave her a half smile, nodded, and edged away.
So. He wasn’t totally ignoring her. Millie took some consolation from that. She squared her shoulders and resolved to keep her wits and maintain her balance.
Millie held her own, David had to give her that. She didn’t let any of the men take liberties, and she didn’t look to them for favors. She could take care of herself, and she seemed to want to do that, so he let her.
Something about the entire situation went against the grain with him. He’d been reared to be a gentleman and to make the way easier for ladies whenever it was within his power. But he kept telling himself he’d done more than his share for Millie already. Besides, he wasn’t 100 percent convinced yet that she was a lady.
The ferry bumped the landing hard, and everyone struggled to keep their feet. The horses scrambled for purchase on the deck. Millie flew to her knees on the rough planking.
David stepped quickly to her side. “Are you all right?”
“Oh, I…”
He held out a hand. “May I help you?” At least three other gentlemen eyed them with disappointment and turned away.
Millie grasped his hand and rose slowly. “Thank you.”
“Are you certain you’re not injured?” He wanted to ask if she’d hurt her knees, but that would be most improper. One never insinuated that a lady had limbs beneath her skirt.
“I shall be fine, thank you.”
He nodded. “Let me see you ashore.”
“Oh—my bag.” She glanced toward the pile of luggage.
“I’ll see to it.”
He turned and located the ferryman’s helper and gave him four bits. “Please take my bags and Mrs. Evans’s to shore, would you?”
“Glad to, sir.” The man pocketed the coins and grabbed the bags David indicated. The passengers disembarked first and gathered to one side of the landing to watch the ferrymen unload their coach and team.
Millie gazed at the tenders while they hitched up the horses, and David gazed at Millie. He didn’t sidle up to her like three or four other fellows tried to. He imagined that if he stepped back, she’d have plenty of gallants to hand her into the coach.
Two passengers left them immediately for destinations in the town, and another went off in the second coach, which was bound for a local train depot. David had weighed the options and decided to ride the stage to the railroad station in Independence, where he and Millie could catch a train to St. Louis. Once they were across the Mississippi, he intended to buy her a ticket to Philadelphia and be quit of her. He saw no reason whatsoever to stay in her proximity once he was sure she had the means to reach her friends.
He turned to make sure their bags were loaded and allowed Andrews to offer Millie his assistance in boarding. To David’s surprise, when he entered, he landed next to her and was a little confused as to how it had come about. Had she somehow shuffled and arranged it? Andrews was sitting on her other side.
For some reason, the other men felt they were now well enough acquainted with Mrs. Evans to chatter away at her all the way into town. David said little, though Andrews made repeated attempts to lure him into the conversation.
“Won’t you tell us a bit about England?” the dandy asked after a while. “I misdoubt any of us has been there.”
David shrugged. “Parts of it look like western Oregon Territory.”
“Have you ever been to London?” another man asked.
“Yes, I have. It’s quite a place.”
“Have you seen the Queen?” The dandy leaned toward him.
“No. When I left England, she was not the Queen. Her uncle William was on the throne then.”
“Ah, William IV,” Andrews said sagely. “I don’t expect you ran in his circles.”
“Uh…no.”
The other passengers laughed, and one of the men on the middle seat winked at David. “Not one of them lords, eh, Stone?”
David smiled but considered it wise to remain silent. The alternatives were to lie or to spill his lineage, so he let them think the other man had made a clever jest. Millie, however, eyed him in silence from beneath her long lashes.
They rode along for some time in amiable conversation, and he thought they must be drawing close to Independence. The horses topped a long hill and started down the other side. The stage lurched forward suddenly, and the driver yelled, “Whoa, you! Slow down, boys.”
They plunged downhill at an imprudent pace, and the men on the middle and rear seats braced themselves. Loose articles hurtled to the floor, and Millie grabbed David’s arm. The coach continued on, bumping and jolting, and the driver’s yells turned to curses.
A sharp drop on one side signified that the wheels had gone
off the edge of the road. They slipped across the seats and slammed against the folks on the far side of the stage.
“We shall overset,” Millie cried. Her green eyes filled with terror, and she clung tightly to his arm.
“Cover your head!”
It was all David had time to say before the coach tumbled on its side and the horses screamed. In the midst of a fierce clattering and cracking, Millie flew into David’s lap, and they both rolled with the stage. He yanked her to his chest and held her close for a second, but the coach crashed into something and jolted her away from him.
CHAPTER 17
Millie moaned and stirred. Someone was yelling, and a horse shrieked piteously. The whole side of her face smarted, and she put her hand to it. It hurt to open her eyes, but she tried to get her bearings. She lay atop a tangle of bodies—all male but hers. She cringed away and winced at the pain in her wrist.
“Anyone alive in there?”
It was the shotgun rider’s voice. His head appeared above Millie, poking in through the window, which was now part of the ceiling.
“Y–yes,” she managed to say and reached a hand toward him.
“Easy, ma’am. We’ll get you out.”
She wondered how he and the driver had escaped injury, but they both seemed to be in one piece. Probably they jumped off the box when they saw that the stage was going over.
The driver appeared on the far side of the damaged vehicle, and she realized then that the bottom of the coach was ripped half away. The driver squeezed in between a broken floorboard and the end of one of the seats.
“Come on out this way, ma’am. Looks like you’re the topmost one and the easiest to get out.”
It took both of them to pull her through the opening, and her skirt snagged on a splintered board. Before she could tell the men to stop pulling, a rent a foot long ventilated her brown bombazine skirt.
She stood shakily and looked around. The screaming horse lay on his side. The other three were unhitched from the wreckage, but still in their harness, standing off a ways and huffing out deep breaths.
“Is he going to be all right?” Millie asked, indicating the injured animal.
“Not sure.” The shotgun messenger grunted. “We’ll check him over once we get all the passengers out.”
“Of course.” Millie stepped away from the shattered coach.
“Whyn’t you see to Stone?” the driver said as he dove toward the hole in the floorboards once more.
“Stone?” Millie whipped her head around, looking for David.
“He’s yonder,” the shotgun rider said glumly, pointing up the hillside down which they’d evidently plummeted.
A figure in dark clothing lay halfway up, sprawled near a large rock. Millie gasped. He must have been thrown out through the gaping hole in the floor as they rolled.
She hiked up her skirt and staggered up the slope. At least her limbs worked. How many of her fellow travelers were severely wounded?
She reached David’s side and fell, panting, to her knees.
“Mr. Stone!”
He lay face down, and she grasped his shoulder to turn him toward her but stopped. One of his pant legs was saturated with blood, and his leg’s crooked attitude made her heart sink. If nothing else, his leg was broken. She’d heard people could bleed to death if the large blood vessel in the leg was severed.
She didn’t want to cause him more harm, but she couldn’t let him lie there bleeding. She wondered if she could find the source and put pressure on it. That was the way to stop it, wasn’t it? She touched his leg gingerly, but he didn’t react. Her cotton glove came away red with his blood.
The terrible thought seized her that he might be already dead. She tore off her gloves and scooted around to his other side. She peered down at his pale face. Reaching out hesitantly, she put her fingertips to his neck. She couldn’t feel his pulse, but at that moment he took in a shuddering breath.
Her relief was so great that she felt lightheaded. Surely they should loosen his necktie and collar. What else could she do to make him comfortable without causing more hurt? At the bottom of the hill, the driver and shotgun rider pulled a man from the debris. They laid him on the grass and turned back to get another. Millie counted three passengers down there—one sitting up and rubbing his arm, and the other two prone and still. It would be a while before anyone came to help her.
Frantically, she tugged at David’s coat. If she could get her hands in his pockets, she would surely find something useful. David Stone never went anywhere without a clean handkerchief.
David awoke to a loud noise. At first he thought he was in the middle of a gun battle again. He opened his eyes to blue sky, green grass, and pain.
A handsome woman with auburn hair glinting in the sun leaned over him.
“Charlotte.” It came out a whisper, but she heard, and she smiled.
“It’s Millie, but yes.”
He tried to sit up and fell back at once with a groan. The stabbing pain in his leg ran all through him and left him breathless, with a tight, sick feeling below his breastbone.
“Am I shot?”
“No, but you’re hurt bad. Relax, Mr. Stone. I’ve got a farmer bringing some blankets to carry you on. We’ll get you to Independence and a doctor.”
He tried to sort that out while taking a few careful breaths and looking up at the high branches of a tree that waved gently overhead. A cool breeze lifted a few strands of his hair.
“Was there a shot? I thought I heard…”
She grimaced. “That was Gip. He had to put down one of the horses.”
“Gip?” David blinked up at her, feeling as though they’d shared a long history, but he couldn’t remember the half of it.
“He’s our shotgun rider. The driver couldn’t do it, so Gip did. It’s very sad, but better a horse than a man.”
“Yes, indeed.” David gritted his teeth. “If I may ask, what happened?”
“The stage went off the edge of the road and tumbled down this hill. Gip said the horses bolted, and the driver couldn’t stop them. The stage is now a heap of kindling. I think you fell out when the floorboards ripped open.”
David couldn’t think of a response. This tale was so bizarre, no one would believe it. It might make for good drawing room talk, though—if he survived.
The pain swept over him again, and he gasped.
Millie touched his brow gently. “Try to relax, Mr. Stone. We’ll get you to a doctor as quickly as we can. Your leg is bleeding a lot, but I’ve tied a cloth around it, and I don’t think you’ll die of it.”
She sounded dubious, and he didn’t ask for particulars.
“Does anything else hurt?” she asked.
“My head aches. And my side.” He patted his ribcage and winced.
“Hmm. Your breathing is all right though.”
“Seems so.” He squinted up at her. When she moved her head, the rays of sunlight made vagrant wisps of her hair gleam like firebrands.
“Ah, here’s the farmer.”
Millie stood, and David tried to see the man she had mentioned, but that involved moving more than his head, and it wasn’t worth the stabbing pain.
“This ‘un?” a man said.
“Yes, take him first.”
“Looks like there’s a lot of people hurt down yonder.”
“You take this man now,” Millie said firmly. “I’ll help you, if you and your son can’t do it.”
“Maybe one of them other fellas—”
“They are busy with the other passengers. You said you can’t get your wagon any closer.”
“No’m.”
“Then let us get Mr. Stone into it, and you can take us as quickly as you can to a doctor and send others back to help the stagecoach men.”
“Awright.”
They shuffled about him, and he lay panting and trying to assess his wounds. His leg. How bad was it really? Were his ribs broken? How would they ever get him to the wagon? He was at Millie’s mercy.
“Hey!”
At the shout, David rolled his head slightly and gazed down the slope. The driver was climbing the hill toward them.
“You!” he yelled. “Help us get those men up to the road.”
Millie stepped around to where her skirts blocked David’s view of the driver. “Mr. Stone is likely to bleed to death if we don’t take him straight to a doctor. We’ll send help back to you.”
“I got four men down there in about as bad condition,” the driver said testily.
“But Mr. Stone is up here, and we can have him in the wagon in five minutes. If we wait while you cart those men up here, he may die.”
David let the air out of his lungs in a whoosh. Was he really that bad off, or was she just being bossy, exaggerating his injuries to get her way? He did feel lightheaded, and he had barely stirred.
“How far is it?” the driver shouted.
The farmer was closer than David had realized, on his other side.
“Nary a mile and a half.”
After a pause the driver said, “All right, but you hurry back here. We’ll get those others up if we can. We need help right away though. If a doctor can come out here, it would be good.”
“Let’s go,” Millie said grimly. “Sir, you and your son lift him. Be careful. I’ll move his leg over onto the blanket while you get the rest of him.”
The farmer hesitated, and Millie cried, “Now!”
She was barking orders like an enraged fishwife, which David found oddly comforting and reassuring—it confirmed his assumption that she wasn’t a real lady at all, though she could don a cloak of gentility when it served her purposes. Right now, he didn’t need a lady. He needed a tough, determined advocate. It seemed Millie fit the bill.
The farmer snarled and grabbed him roughly under his shoulders. His strapping son bent on David’s other side. David braced himself for their rough touch, but when his leg jostled, he tensed and then surrendered to the swirling blackness.
Peregrin Walmore leaned out the window of the hack, gazing at the buildings that lined the street. He was here, on the infamous thoroughfare known as Broadway, in New York City. Though nothing here was more than two hundred years old, he couldn’t help being impressed. While not London, the city had a busyness, a vitality about it that warmed his blood.
THE Prairie DREAMS Trilogy Page 78
