She whirled and began angrily taking down pans and other necessities for the evening meal. Opal watched her a moment, wanting to believe her. But, after all, Clarence would never lie. He was a good, Christian young man who had never done anything but make his father proud of him. Miranda Hayes must not even realize how she was tempting the poor boy. The woman walked to the second wagon, where her husband was helping unhitch the oxen. She pulled him aside.
“I think perhaps we should consider helping Miranda find someone else to travel with when we reach the next fort, Wilbur. I am afraid this whole thing with Clarence may get out of hand. Perhaps we made a wrong decision letting her come along.”
The reverend sighed, removing his hat and running a hand through his thinning red hair. “I agree. I will think about it over the next few days, discuss it with John and Berny and Father. I hate to abandon her that way, but if she’s at a fort, she’ll be safe until she finds other traveling companions. This is partly our fault for being so quick to take her in. I was just so anxious to have a traveling companion for you that I didn’t consider that her being such an attractive widow might cause problems with all these men along. I’ll pray about it.”
“Thank you, Wilbur.” Opal returned to her work, feeling Miranda’s anger as they worked together to prepare supper. It was really too bad they would probably have to leave poor Miranda behind, but Opal could not think what else to do. After all, the family and Christian values came first.
***
Miranda sat down on a stump, wondering if she had ever felt more alone. Another week of putting up with stares and cold shoulders had passed since she had told Opal exactly what she thought. Thank goodness Clarence had stayed away from her lately, but several times she had seen the reverend talking privately with his brothers and father, knew they were discussing her. This hell had to end somewhere, and she had decided to come here to be alone to pray and think. She had decided that she would face the reverend and the others head-on, speak up to them before they could pompously come to her first. Her anger was taking over the hurt now. It was time to stand up to the Jenningses and get everything out in the open, even though they were the ones in charge. Enough was enough.
She put her head in her hands, listening to the soft, night breeze in the cottonwood trees. The wagon train was perhaps twenty yards away, and for the moment it felt good to be entirely alone, away from the looks and the whispers. She listened to crickets, grateful that a breeze the last two nights had kept the mosquitoes at bay.
What a fool you were to think you could go running off to Nevada, she told herself. You should have listened to Jake, listened to Sheriff McCleave. She had never been attracted to the sheriff, but right now being back in Kansas City and letting him court her sounded wonderful. She was sure none of her friends back there considered her as some kind of wanton woman just because she was a widow. They had known Mack, knew how hard his death had been on her. She could still be with them, but instead she had chosen this pain and discomfort and danger just to find a brother who probably didn’t want to be found. It had seemed so important at the time. What was left for her if she couldn’t find Wesley? Would she have lost all that was Miranda Baker Hayes?
Perhaps she already had. She was certainly a different person from the young woman who had first come to Kansas from Illinois. Sometimes she wondered who that person was. She longed for some kind of stability and she supposed that was why it was important to find Wesley. Maybe she could make a home for him, have family again. What was there for a person without family? Nothing but loneliness and a feeling of not belonging anywhere. No wonder Jake was such a lost soul. He not only had no family left, he didn’t even have good memories to look back on.
Jake. How many times had her thoughts turned to him? Sometimes it was so comforting to think of him.
“A penny for your thoughts,” a voice said.
Miranda jumped, startled that someone was there. Clarence! The brat had followed her here, sneaky devil that he was. How could she not have heard him, unless he had deliberately sneaked up as quietly as possible?
She immediately rose, on guard. “You have no right to be here,” she said firmly. “I came here to be alone.”
“Did you?”
She could see him better now in the bright moonlight. He stepped closer.
“I don’t believe that, Mrs. Hayes. You were hoping me or one of the other men would see you walk off and would follow. You’ve been trying to find a way to be alone with one of the men this whole trip.”
Miranda wished she had her handbag along. If she did, she would find it very easy to take out her pistol and shoot him here and now. “You are a stupid young man who likes to fantasize,” she answered. “Now get back to the wagons.”
He came even closer, close enough to touch her. “I don’t take orders from anybody but Uncle Wilbur and my pa.” He grasped her arms, and Miranda jerked away.
“Touch me again and I’ll scream,” she said in a near growl. “Your father and the holy reverend will soon learn the kind of man you really are! They’ll know who’s been lying and who’s been telling the truth all along!”
He grabbed her again, this time his grip tight enough to hurt. Miranda realized he was a surprisingly strong young man for his slender build. “Will they?” he snarled. “Scream all you want, Mrs. Hayes. No matter how it works out, they’ll see you as a slut! I’ll make sure they know you lured me out here, that I just couldn’t resist your invitation, because I’m just an innocent boy who’s been manipulated by an experienced woman lonely for a man. No, lady, you won’t scream, because you know that the only way out of this, the only way to save face and be allowed to stay with us, is to cooperate and give me what you know I want…and what I know you want!”
He jerked her arms behind her and pressed her close against him. Miranda could feel his hardened erection pressing at her belly. His breath smelled from the fried onions he had eaten at supper. “The best thing for you to do is just quietly let it happen, Mrs. Hayes. That way they’ll never know. I sure won’t tell. Will you?”
He tried to kiss her, and she turned her face away. He bit at her neck, and for one brief moment, Miranda wondered if he was right. Did she really have any choice? Not one person along would believe her side of the story. Clarence pushed her to the ground, and an inner pride and fury welled up inside her. To hell with what any of them thought! Clarence Jennings was not going to get away with this, even if it meant she had to travel the rest of this trip completely alone and dragging her own trunk!
He let go of her arms to grab at her breasts, sure she would not resist. Miranda took the opportunity to jab at his eyes and face while she let out a bloodcurdling scream. She fought wildly then, scratching, biting, butting heads.
“Goddamn, you split my lip!” Clarence yelled, jumping away from her.
Miranda was immediately on her feet, gripping a rock she had grabbed as she rose. She threw it at him, and Clarence cried out when it hit him hard in the ribs.
“You bitch!” he snarled. “You slut!”
“Get out of my sight, or by God I’ll find my pistol and kill you!” Miranda told him. She heard the sound of people crashing through the trees.
“Mrs. Hayes! What’s wrong?” someone shouted. “Mrs. Hayes! Is it you out there? Are you all right?”
“Pa!” Clarence shouted back before Miranda could answer. “Pa, I think she broke my rib!”
“Clarence!” Miranda recognized James Gaylord’s voice. The man came closer to his son. “What happened?”
“What is going on here?” The demand came from Reverend Jennings. The man’s brothers, and his friend Adam Hummer also arrived on the scene. “Did you see Indians? What happened?”
“What’s going on?”
Miranda recognized Hap Dearing’s voice. She knew what they would all think, and it made her want to crawl into a hole. Before she could make any reply
, Clarence began carrying on about how she had lured him here and made him think he could kiss her. Through tears he told how she had suddenly changed her mind and started screaming and fighting him. “She’s just trying to get me in trouble, Pa,” he wept. “I know I shouldn’t have come out here with her. I’m sorry, Pa.”
“Get back to camp!” Gaylord commanded his son. Miranda could not see his face well, but she could sense his fury.
“Your son followed me here deliberately,” she told the man. “He’s handing you a pack of lies to get himself out of trouble. Can’t you see that? He attacked me! He tried to force himself on me!”
“Enough!” This time it was the reverend who spoke up. “We will go back to camp and talk about this.” The man turned and stormed away, and the others followed, no one offering to walk with Miranda. She walked behind them, shaking from Clarence’s abuse, wishing she could bathe and wash off his touch, the saliva he had left on her neck. How ironic that she had spent several days with a notorious outlaw and never once felt threatened the way she had felt around Clarence from the first day they left Independence. How she hated him! She knew already no one was going to listen to her side of the story. Their minds were made up. Clarence had given a convincing performance.
She longed for a friend, someone to turn to. She needed someone’s understanding at this moment, but when she looked at the faces around the fire when they reached camp, she saw not one kind face. Hap Dearing and his men looked at her as though she were wearing rouge and a red taffeta dress. One of them looked ready to burst out laughing as his eyes boldly roved over her, as though to say he knew all along she was easy. The Jennings men, as well as the brother-in-law James Gaylord, and their missionary friend Adam Hummer, all gave her accusing stares, the Reverend Jennings glaring at her with his nose in the air like a pious judge.
“Mrs. Hayes, we have already discussed the possibility of leaving you behind at one of the forts,” he told Miranda. “I am terribly sorry, but that is what we are going to have to do.”
Miranda felt the panic setting in. If they left her behind, she would have to go on with strangers she didn’t know anything about. And what kind of people would be at the place where they would leave her? How long would it take to find someone new to travel with? If she had to wait too long, she would never make it all the way to Nevada this summer. She would be stranded in the middle of nowhere. “I did absolutely nothing improper,” she told the preacher. “Your nephew has been harassing me ever since we left Independence. I have asked him time and again to leave me alone! He has spread lies about me and—”
“I won’t listen to any more to your own lies!” Clarence’s father roared.
“Why do you think I screamed and fought him!” Miranda shouted back. “Does that sound like a woman who had lured him out there for illicit purposes?”
“You just wanted to get me in trouble, to try to prove it was all me!” Clarence put in, the tears still coming. “You touched me! You said if I came out there with you, you’d show me about women!”
Miranda closed her eyes. Oh, how she wanted to kill! She felt on fire, full of rage, and she breathed deeply for control. She needed to scream and cry, but she was determined not to crumble in front of these pompous asses. She held her chin high and faced the reverend. “If you want to believe your nephew over me, there is nothing I can do about it,” she told him calmly. “I am telling you that you are wrong, Reverend, and if you leave me behind, the sin will be on your head for abandoning an innocent woman. I hope it haunts you forever!”
She saw the man flinch, saw the hint of doubt in his eyes, and she hoped he’d choke on that doubt. “Go ahead and leave me behind. I really don’t care anymore. I would rather walk the rest of the way with my trunk on my back than to spend the next two months with such people. And you call yourselves Christians!”
She turned and walked away, almost anxious now to be left behind so that she would never have to look at their faces again. You’re a survivor, Miranda Hayes, she told herself. You’ll make it to Nevada with or without them. Everyone had tried to tell her she couldn’t do this, but by God she would!
“There’s a trading post not far ahead,” she heard Hap Dearing telling the reverend. “It’s not very big, but at least there are supplies there in case she gets stranded for long. Lots of people stop there. I expect we could leave her off there. The sooner, the better. All this trouble is slowin’ us down, and I don’t intend to lose any time. If you want to stay along with me and my men for protection, I’d get rid of her at the trading post. There’s men there that can look after her.”
Men? What kind of men? Miranda felt sick and lonely, but she was determined not to show any fear or concern if Jennings left her at the trading post. She would get the Winchester out of her trunk and make sure every man there knew he had better leave her alone!
She blinked back tears. An owl hooted somewhere nearby, and it seemed only to accent her despair. She walked farther out into the prairie grass, found a flat rock in the moonlight, and sat down. Her feet ached from a long day’s walk, and she reached down and removed her high-button shoes. She rubbed at her feet, and it was then she heard the dreaded rattling sound.
It all happened in the matter of a second. She realized what was lurking under the rock, and in that same sudden thought, before she could react to the sound of the rattler, she felt the horrid pain in her left foot and knew she had been bitten. She gasped with the pain, knew something had to be done quickly. She also knew from her father that a person bitten by a rattler should never run, but panic took away all reasoning. She clung to her shoes and ran back to the camp, collapsing when she reached the fire.
“Ssssnake!” she managed to get out before things began to go black on her.
She felt someone fussing around her foot, heard Hap Dearing tell someone to get him a knife. “…suck out the venom as best I can…” she thought she heard the man say.
“Oh, dear God, what is going to happen next?” It was Opal’s voice.
“Maybe it’s God’s punishment on her for being bad,” Clarence said with a sneer.
I’m going to die, Miranda thought, suddenly feeling very calm. I’m going to die out here and be buried in an unmarked grave. No one will ever know what happened to me. Not Wesley…not even Jake. Why did the thought of Jake not knowing hurt the most?
Good-bye, Jake. She saw his face, saw his smile as he rode away from her. It was her last thought before she fell into total unconsciousness.
Eight
Jake urged a weary Outlaw toward the trading post, wondering how much longer his two horses could keep up the pace he had forced them to endure for the past two weeks. He had been careful not to ride them so hard that they gave out on him, but he had not been nearly as easy on the animals as he would normally have been.
For two weeks he had searched among the travelers he passed heading west. None had seen or heard of the Jennings clan, so he knew that they still had to be ahead somewhere. Hope had sprung anew when he found a trader at Fort Kearny who did remember the reverend and his family, as well as the lovely young widow woman traveling with them.
“Prettiest thing I’ve ever seen,” the man had commented, bringing a warmth to Jake’s heart he was not accustomed to feeling.
“Did she seem all right?” Jake asked.
“Believe so,” the trader had answered, “except that preacher and his family she was travelin’ with, I don’t know, they didn’t seem to be too friendly to her. Maybe it was just my imagination. You know her?”
“I know her. How long ago were they here?”
“Oh, maybe five, six days.”
Jake had ridden the horses even harder since then. There was no doubt now that he had to be getting close. Again he had checked with every group of travelers he passed, but none knew anything about the party Miranda was with, which meant he was still behind them. He didn’t like slowing down n
ow, but he needed supplies. He decided he would stop at the trading post just ahead and see if they had what he needed. Maybe someone here had seen the Jenningses and could tell him how close he was.
Now that he was in dangerous, lawless country, Jake had decided to wear his revolvers again. Both were strapped on, and his rifle and shotgun rested in their boots at either side of his saddle. He knew better than most that a man couldn’t be too careful, especially a wanted man. The poster back at Independence still haunted him, and he had been sure to shave every day since seeing it.
As he approached the trading post, he scanned his surroundings, a man ever alert. A bearded, dirty-looking, heavyset man stood inside a corral of horses, removing riding gear from one of them. He glanced at Jake and nodded but did not smile. Jake nodded in return, thinking what a pitiful-looking post this was. Two other men sat near an open fire to his left, watching a hunk of beef that was hung over the flames to roast. They, too, looked filthy. All kinds of trash cluttered the area, from broken-down wagons to rusted pans. Chickens clucked and fluttered about the area, and there was a general bad smell about the place.
Jake could not imagine that the Jennings clan had stopped at a place like this, but then if they needed supplies bad enough, they might have. The post consisted of five small buildings, two log and three sod, all with sod roofs. The biggest one had a sign that read Supplies, another read Saloon, and yet another Bath House. Jake supposed the two smallest buildings were living quarters for whomever ran the meager operation. Outside the supply store were stacks of baled hay and sacks of potatoes, as well as a few buffalo skins and some blankets.
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