by Merry Farmer
“Jarvis. I’ve been traveling west on the Oregon Trail, sleeping out in the wilderness, every night for months now. I have learned to make the best of things and to handle myself.”
He couldn’t help but grin at the force of her determination and the strength behind her words. She’d changed so much in the short time he’d known her. The shy, gloomy beauty he’d met coming into Ft. Bridger had transformed, like a caterpillar into a butterfly. Now she was a strong, powerful woman, even more beautiful than before.
“Besides,” she added, walking with him up to Hattie’s wagon. “What’s the worst that can happen?”
Chapter Sixteen
There were plans to make before camping out to guard the fences. Alice rode back to Howard’s house with Hattie to fetch clean clothes and bedding for the night. Jarvis, in turn, headed to Ginny’s to give her a run-down of everything that was going on and everything that they were doing about it. He didn’t need to go far before running into her.
Halfway through walking back to her house with John Bryant, they met Ginny coming out to the stream, driving a wagon full of fence rails.
“Where are you all going?” she called to them from the driver’s seat with a frown.
Jarvis and John exchanged wary looks, then Jarvis answered, “We’ve decided to quit early for the day.”
“What?” Ginny blinked and shook her head. “You’re giving up?”
“Both sides are, ma’am,” John answered.
“It was that or get into a fight,” Jarvis went on. “No one wanted that.”
Ginny humphed. “It doesn’t have anything to do with my broken wagon, does it? My cook, Penny, said she spotted some of Howard’s workers, the ones who toady to Franklin, fiddling with it this morning.”
“That’s it, unfortunately,” Jarvis said.
“Well I’m not having any of that,” Ginny blew on. “I had the men load these rails into another wagon, and I’m taking them out to the stream whether Howard likes it or not.”
Jarvis had to admire her fight, he just wasn’t sure if it was going to help them or hurt them.
“I’ll ride back with you,” he said. He waved goodbye to John, then hopped up into the wagon with Ginny.
By the time they reached the stream, almost everyone had gone. Two of Howard’s men and one of Ginny’s had stayed behind, insisting they were guarding the work site. Ginny and Jarvis didn’t stay long, only enough to drop the supplies off. Howard’s men might have grumbled to each other about the load of rails, but Jarvis wasn’t sure. They were dispirited, no matter what they were saying.
“So you plan to stay out there all night, just guarding rails?” Ginny asked as she and Jarvis walked back toward her house for the second time.
Jarvis shrugged. “It seems like the best thing to do to keep certain people from trying to cheat again.”
Ginny snorted. “That nephew of mine doesn’t have enough sense to rub together.”
Jarvis grinned at her. He agreed, but wasn’t sure saying so would help.
“It will be nice to spend a night out under the stars with Alice,” he admitted. “It’s shaping up to be a lovely night.”
“I’ll say,” Ginny laughed. She strayed close enough to Jarvis to thump him on the back. “You’re putting in a valiant effort to win that fair lady, son.”
“You could say that.” Jarvis peeked sideways at her, a rush of embarrassment over his and Alice’s slip-up the night before filling him with heat. “I don’t think there’s much more I could do, short of hefting her over my shoulder and toting her to the nearest chapel.”
Ginny shook with amusement. “I know some men who would do just that. Your patience commends you, son.”
“Well, in spite of the fact that my father raised me to be a man of honor, I haven’t been as patient as I should.”
“Oh?” Ginny’s brow flew up. “That is a story I’d love to hear.”
“It’s a story I won’t be telling,” Jarvis confessed, blushing darker.
“With a look like that, son, you don’t have to say anything. I’ll put together the pieces myself.” She followed her statement with a hearty laugh and a sigh. “Ah, young people. You’re far more entertaining than you know. You push and try so hard to impress each other and grizzled old souls like me.”
“I’m not trying to impress anyone,” Jarvis protested.
“No?” Ginny grinned at him, not believing a word he said. “But you are trying to win the girl.”
He replied with a wistful smile. “Sometimes I think I have, and sometimes I think I never will. My father would tell me I won’t, no doubt.”
“Your father sounds like an ass. I know you well enough to see that you will win that girl,” Ginny reassured him, taking his arm as they walked the last few yards to the house. “I don’t see how she can resist you as it is.”
Jarvis grinned at her remark, grinned over someone calling his father an ass. He could imagine Ginny saying it to his father’s face, too. Maybe he should have said it himself instead of leaving home, but it was too late for that. He had other mountains to climb now. He needed to find a way to convince Alice to become his wife.
Thoughts about how he could accomplish that followed him all the way through the preparations he made for camping out by the stream. Ginny helped him to find a better bedroll than the militia-issued one he’d brought with him from Ft. Bridger. She loaded him up with food for supper and a lamp, then drove him back out to the spot as the sun was beginning to set. The whole time, he racked his brain, searching for some way that he could guard Alice’s heart as well as the fence supplies.
Alice was already there, with a cooking fire going and her bedding spread out in a soft patch of grass near a stand of bushes, when Jarvis arrived. She was alone. Evidently, whichever of the Brannons they’d asked to spend the night out by the stream with them hadn’t arrived yet.
“Well, I’ll leave you to it,” Ginny told both of them once she’d unloaded Jarvis’s supplies. “You two behave. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
Jarvis had the impression there wasn’t a lot that Ginny wouldn’t do.
“Good night, Ginny.” He waved goodbye to her as she drove off, then turned to set up his camp. “So none of the Brannons have arrived yet?” he asked Alice across the space of the stream.
“Not yet,” Alice answered.
Part of Jarvis had expected to find her nervous or afraid, out by the stream all alone with him, especially after what had happened between them the night before. Instead, she was relaxed and wore a gentle smile as she tended her dinner, cooking over the open fire. She’d thought to bring a barrel with her to sit on as she worked, whereas Jarvis was stuck piling up some of the rails that had been broken when the cattle crushed the fences. Alice knew how to survive out in the wilderness, possibly better than he did.
“Is this what life is like on the Oregon Trail?” he called across the short distance separating them.
She glanced up from her work, looked briefly around at the unfinished fences and the piles of supplies, then met his eyes.
“Yes and no,” she said. “Yes in that we spent weeks outdoors, fixing our food over campfires just like this and battling the elements. I’m getting much better at cooking bean and bacon stew.” She grinned proudly.
“I bet,” Jarvis laughed.
“But no, on the trail, there are people around you all the time. The noise can be deafening, especially when all you want is quiet.”
Her face fell and she concentrated on staring at her stew, stirring it in the small pot she’d brought with her. Even then, the burst of sadness in her eyes wasn’t the same as it had been when Jarvis had first met her. It was more contemplative and less oppressive.
“I’m sure you got to the point where you could ignore the rest of the people and focus on your own business,” he said, not wanting to let the conversation stop. “That’s how it is at the fort.”
Alice nodded, shaking herself and sitting straighter, then smiling
again. “You do after a while. But I still like a little quiet now and then. This is nice.” She glanced around, then met his eyes. A warm blush and a smile lit her beautiful face. The warm reds and oranges of the setting sun caught in her hair.
“This is very nice,” Jarvis agreed.
If he was smart, he would pack up his camp now and shift across the stream to spend his time with her. He would merge his supper with hers and they would sit and enjoy it together, talking about the future. The only thing that stopped him—aside from the fact that he’d already set up his camp and had just gotten a fire going—was the fact that one of the Brannons would be along at any moment. He didn’t want to risk Alice getting jumpy if someone saw them cozying up together. He couldn’t forget the way she’d bolted at the slightest noise last night.
Last night.
“Alice,” he began, weighing his words and checking to be sure that no one was about to ride up on them and interrupt.
“Hmm?” she asked from her side of the stream.
He was suddenly unsure what to say. He hesitated, poked at his fire, and checked on the food supplies Ginny had sent with him. That wasn’t helping. He needed to say something, face things head-on.
“You were wonderful today.”
He winced. It may have been a compliment, but it was avoiding the truth.
Alice smiled anyhow. “Thank you. I have to admit, I liked being in charge.”
“You did?” But of course she did. Leadership fit her like a glove.
“When there’s work to do, everything else becomes so clear,” she went on, stirring her stew and biting her lip in thought. “I don’t know why all of my society friends in New York, or even my mother, can’t see it. Work is structured. It’s organized.”
“Even this work?” Jarvis teased. “Even with men like Franklin involved?”
She laughed. “Even that. Franklin wasn’t helping the situation. The work itself is so clear-cut. Build a fence. Put one rail on top of the other. It’s so straightforward, so… so in control.”
Her face twisted as a thought hit her. It transformed her, whatever it was, imbuing her with a growing strength as she mulled it over. Jarvis would have done anything to know what that thought was. He fished through the basket of food Ginny had packed for him, realizing he didn’t need to prepare or heat any of it. It was all leftovers. All he had to do was eat it and contemplate the wonder that was Alice.
“My life has been so out of control for so long,” she spoke softly, mostly to herself. “I’ve been tossed around by fate, unable to choose my path. But work.” She drew in a breath and straightened, meeting Jarvis’s eyes. “Work is something I can make my own decisions about. I think I like making my own decisions.”
“We all do,” he agreed.
“No.” She shook her head, leaning toward him, even though she was yards away. “I’ve been at the mercy of other people’s decisions for too long. Harry decided to go to war. He decided we should marry, although I agreed to that. Mother and Father decided to come west. And I… I didn’t decide I wanted to be a widow. But—”
She paused, staring into nothing for a moment. A flicker of a smile touched her lips. In the dying light of sunset, it made her glow with life. Jarvis’s heart leapt in his chest. He wanted to drop everything and run across the stream to take her in his arms. He would have if Alice hadn’t smiled right at him.
“I decided to come here with you,” she said. “It was your suggestion, yes, and Father encouraged me, but coming here to solve this dispute was the first real decision I made in so long.”
“It was a good decision,” he said, a warm blossom of pride in her filling him.
“Yes,” she agreed, her smile growing. “It was. And it was my decision to ride over to Ginny’s last night to carry Howard’s message, and—”
Her smile tightened and she lowered her eyes in a sudden burst of modesty. That only made Jarvis’s blood pump harder.
“About last night,” he began.
Alice flushed, looking away. “Last night,” she repeated.
Jarvis was tempted to be disappointed by her turning away, but she hadn’t rushed on to tell him how big of a mistake they’d made or that making love should never have happened.
“Last night,” he began again. “I think what happened between us was inevitable.”
“Inevitable?” she asked, quieter than before.
Jarvis remembered Ginny’s advice to be patient, to be gentle with her. Maybe the time for that was past.
“I love you,” he said as if it was a statement of fact. “I think you have feelings for me too, though I won’t presume to put a name on them. That’s for you to do. I think you love me because otherwise, last night wouldn’t have happened. You’re not that kind of woman. And that’s why I love you.” His heart thundered in his chest by the time he got it all out. He hadn’t expected it to blow out all at once like that.
Alice didn’t answer.
He loved her.
Alice drew in a long breath. Of course, she knew that Jarvis loved her. She’d known almost from the first. Men at fancy balls in New York had claimed to fall in love with her at first sight before, but with Jarvis it was different. She believed him. Suspecting that he loved her two weeks ago when they first met had been awkward, now it filled her with light and warmth. She was loved.
The thought consumed her so thoroughly that her campfire stew bubbled over.
“Oh,” she exclaimed, snapping to attention and using the corner of a blanket to yank the pot away from the fire.
She stirred the stew madly for a moment, hoping she hadn’t burnt it too badly. A few of the potatoes and vegetables that had been on the bottom of the pot when her thoughts had drifted were a little blackened, but overall her dinner was more or less intact. She twisted and reached to find the bowl she’d brought to put it in, a spoon, and the mug of cold tea Hattie had packed for her.
By the time she had her dinner settled, Jarvis had gone on eating his supper. A sharp spear of regret hit Alice. He’d declared his love and she’d ignored him. Now that she had her supper in her lap, she leaned forward and opened her mouth to reply, but no words came to mind.
How did you respond when someone declared their love in such sweet terms? Jarvis wasn’t watching her now, at least not openly. Alice pressed her lips together and lowered her gaze to her stew. She didn’t know what to say because she didn’t know how she felt. The whole idea that she could love again, that she could be someone other than the grieving widow that she’d become over the last year—or even the dazzling debutante that she’d been in New York—was a new one, a strange one.
She was someone new, though. She could feel it. Her skin practically itched as the old her peeled away and the new woman she was cracked through the old façade. She was a woman who led a crew of men in competition. She was a woman who rode astride, who galloped across the Wyoming plain and loved it. She was a woman who gave and took pleasure freely on the spur of the moment because it felt right.
And it had felt right.
“I wonder where Carl Brannon is,” Jarvis spoke after what seemed like an hour of silence.
It couldn’t have been that long, could it? Alice hadn’t been drifting on the waves of her realizations all evening, had she? Possibly. The sun had dipped well toward the horizon and she’d finished her dinner without tasting a bite. It would be dark before long.
“It seems odd that no one else has arrived to guard the site with us,” she said.
It was time she stopped drifting in her thoughts and focus on the concrete. She stood and carried her empty bowl and mug down to the stream to wash them.
Jarvis wandered down to join her. He came to a stop only a few feet away from her, the shallow stream gurgling between them.
“Did they tell Brannon that we were coming out right away?” he asked. “Maybe he thinks we weren’t coming until later.”
Alice swished water through her bowl, rubbing the insides. She could feel Jarvis’s pre
sence so close to her. Her body responded to him, to the fact that they were alone, with the same humming and pulsing that it had the night before in the barn. She stood.
“Who was sent to ask Mr. Brannon to come?”
“Well,” Jarvis started, but nothing followed.
He brushed a hand through his hair. Alice blinked. She hadn’t seen him take the tie holding it back in a ponytail out, but it was free and loose now. He surprised her by breaking into a chuckle, eyes dancing in the light of the setting sun.
“You didn’t send anyone to call on him, did you?” he asked.
With a quick, giddy catch in Alice’s chest, she realized their mistake.
“No,” she answered. “And you didn’t either.”
“Nope,” he laughed.
Alice laughed with him. They’d both assumed the other would take care of the asking. Now here they were, alone on a beautiful evening as the sun set. No one was coming to interrupt them.
What kind of woman was she? The question buzzed through her mind, through her body, again. Was she a woman who let grief and obligation hold her back, or was she a woman who embraced the future with both arms?
Oh Harry, what should I do?
The instinctual question caught her off-guard. She kept her smile, but turned away, walking back to her camp. In her heart, she searched for Harry’s answer, for the truth of whether he would forgive her for loving again, but Harry was silent.
Jarvis, however, wasn’t.
“I’ve been thinking,” he said, crossing over the stream in one long stride and following her to her camp a few yards away. “We really should figure out a way to call this competition off.”
“Call it off?” Alice reached her fire and the barrel she’d been sitting on. She tucked her bowl and mug away in the small leather satchel Hattie had sent with her.
“It’s such a waste of time,” Jarvis sighed. “And I keep looking at all these fence rails, thinking of about a hundred better uses for them.”
Alice straightened and turned to him. He gazed off over the unfinished fences, solid frustration drawing lines in his handsome face. Every time she looked at him, she saw a new facet. He was a strong man, a born leader. He was someone with ideas and the will to carry them out.
