by Shirl Henke
Stop it! With a disgusted oath he tossed his spoon into the half-empty bowl and flung it none too gently on the ground, then stood up. “How that squaw can take perfectly decent venison and make it taste like rancid crow I’ll never know.”
“Neither will I. My guardian always employed excellent cooks.” Some insane impulse made her bait him, but the moment the words spilled forth he fixed her with a stony glare that indicated just how contemptible the remark was.
“On the Missouri people learn to cook for themselves...or they go hungry.”
“Or, if they’re men, they can buy a woman to do it for them.” Would she ever learn to think before she spoke? Olivia felt the blush to the roots of her hair and was grateful for the darkness as she shoved away her bowl of mostly uneaten stew.
“A good squaw is worth half a dozen fine horses. I only paid one for you.” He waited a beat, then added, “I should’ve kept the horse.”
Samuel turned away and headed toward the tent. He reached down to pull open the end flap just as Olivia’s stew bowl flew over his head, splattering him with several greasy chunks of meat that bounced away like rubber balls, leaving a sticky spray of gravy and vegetables behind. He straightened up and brushed the goo from his buckskin shirt, all the while cursing with fluid inventiveness. Then he raised his arms and pulled the shirt over his head in one fluid motion.
Tossing it to Olivia he said in a low deadly voice, “That will be washed and ready for me to wear by tomorrow night.”
Olivia sat silently as he disappeared inside the tent. Her mouth had gone dry when she watched the dim firelight cast shadows across the bronzed beauty of his bare torso. She remembered how hard that furry chest had felt when he pressed her breasts against it and kissed her and how powerful his arms were when they had seized her in the water and pulled her tightly to his body. To her utter mortification, tears welled up in her eyes and a lump as hard as Walks Fast’s biscuits seemed to close down her throat.
I still want him to want me...and he doesn’t...not even as a leman. All they seemed to do was strike sparks off each other. Everything she said and did antagonized him more, whether she intended it or not. What was wrong with her anyway? She had never mooned over any man before, not even the most ardent admirers she’d garnered in Washington. Perhaps it was because she was so alone now, aware of her guardian’s perfidy, stranded in the wilderness with a band of rough, dirty, dangerous men. Samuel was the only one to whom she could turn.
But he does not want you.
“Well, I don’t want him either,” she whispered to herself. But she knew she lied.
Samuel heard her creep into the tent a good while later. He had been unable to sleep in spite of aching exhaustion. All he could do was lie awake and think of the maddening miss outside. He had almost gotten up to go in search of her, fearing she had run into some new sort of trouble. When she climbed into her bedroll beside him, he rolled over with a muttered oath, turning his back to her.
Olivia lay with her arms pressed against her sides, staring into the inky blackness, aware of how small the tent was...and how large the man beside her was. His vital male presence seemed to fill the confining space. He exuded an unnerving hostility that made it difficult for her to lie passively beside him, but she was afraid to move, afraid that if she tried to roll over and turn her back that she might brush against him in the dark, or worse yet, sob aloud and humiliate herself.
I can’t go on this way. It would be another two months until they reached Lisa’s outpost on the Upper Missouri. Two more months of taking his curt orders and enduring his foul temper or icy disdain when she failed to perform her chores satisfactorily. Back in St. Louis she had believed naively that the worst thing that could happen was to become Samuel Shelby’s mistress. Now she knew that it was far worse to have him so utterly disgusted with her that he would not even touch her.
As she lay in the dark contemplating every cruel and scornful word he had spoken to her on this trip, her tears fell like silent rain, rolling over her cheeks and soaking into the scratchy wool blanket beneath her head. Several times she almost did the unthinkable. She almost reached out to him, throwing her arms around his broad shoulders and clinging to him, begging him not to be angry, not to hate her. Each time she squelched the desperate impulse with greater difficulty until finally the truth became clear to her.
She was in love with Samuel Shelby, a man who believed she was without morals, a harlot for sale to the highest bidder, exchanged by her guardian for the price of his favorite racehorse. After the confidences she had shared with him in Washington and the way he had kissed her in Chouteau’s garden, Olivia could not understand how he could have accepted Emory Wescott’s lies.
The bitter fact remained that he had believed every nasty insinuation, thinking that because she disguised herself in boy’s clothes to race horses that she was not fit to bear his name. Not that he ever planned to bestow that singular honor on any female, lady or otherwise, again. He had admitted as much in that ghastly conversation with her guardian. He had been a married man when he flirted with her and kissed her until she was dazed and helpless on that Virginia backroad. He had been the aggressor, she the innocent. Life was so unfair.
She finally did roll over and curl up in a small fetal ball. There had to be a way to escape this horrible quandary. If she could only return to St. Louis, she might this time be able to obtain passage on a boat bound for New Orleans. She would begin all over again and let the devil take Colonel Samuel Shelby.
Surely retracing the past weeks’ journey back down the river could not be that difficult. In spite of Samuel’s dire warnings, there had been no Indians sighted, not even so much as a dangerous wild animal. But then she remembered the wide, swift-moving streams that had fed into the Missouri, easily bypassed aboard the big keelboat, not so easily traversed afoot by a woman who could not even swim. If only she had a horse she might make it, but there were no horses. On that dismal note she finally fell asleep.
The temperature dipped low and the small fire outside their tent burned out. Still deep in sleep, Olivia felt the chill and moved instinctively toward the warmth emanating from Samuel, who had rolled nearer as he tossed and turned in the night.
He felt the slight tickle of long hair as it brushed against his face, then the soft insinuating presence of her hand as it glided across his chest beneath the heavy woolen blanket. He normally slept naked when he had the comforts of a bed, but here in this dangerous wilderness he had grown used to sleeping partially clothed, yet even in his exhausted slumber he could feel her fingertips touching his bare chest. Then the distinct curves of a female body pressed against his side, a most delightfully female body. He was dreaming.
The fire-haired seductress stretched out her arms beckoning, enticing. She was swathed in a loosely belted robe of a translucent gauzelike material. Samuel could see right through it, and his erection ached. His hand traced the indentation of her tiny waist and the enticing firmness of a perfectly molded breast. He cupped his palm around the small globe and felt the nipple tighten into a nubby point. Samuel came into her outstretched arms. His mouth dropped down, instinctively making contact with hers, pressing against the soft allure of her lips, demanding entrance to taste of her. She moaned softly and obliged, letting her arms glide up and around his shoulders, holding onto him as he savaged her with the hungry kiss.
Still half-asleep, Olivia was warm now, in fact she was on fire. A deep burning pain stretched outward from low in her belly, tingling in her breasts, aching in her nether parts as she wriggled and arched her hips restlessly. Something, someone was pressing her against the bedroll, moving over her, touching her body in the most intimate, incredible ways. When his lips claimed hers she was catapulted back to that incredible encounter in the cabin when Samuel had first kissed her.
Samuel!
She knew his hunger and she knew his heat. Every nuance of his body had been imprinted on her in their few brief encounters. Drugged by sleep and desire
, she gave in to the lure of his body and let her instincts and his hands guide her. She felt him pull her shirt open and fondle her breasts. Shocking little spikes of pleasure radiated from the crests as he cupped and teased them. She clung to him, returning his kiss, letting her fingers trace the hard satiny contours of his shoulders and back, then dig into the thick night black hair of his head. She was drowning in a whirlpool of exquisite new sensations and she never wanted to awaken and have it end.
Samuel tried to pull the gauze robe from his temptress. He reached down to free it and encountered a tight waistband. When his hands slid lower they felt the coarse flat seams of a pair of men’s pants! He reached in front of her and felt the fly, tightly buttoned. Britches? Where was the transparent wrap? Where was his seductress?
Olivia!
Shock awakened him like a bucket of icy river water. They were in the tent and she had tried to seduce him, the damnable little she-cat! Randy fool that he was, he had almost succumbed. Muttering an obscenity, he climbed off her as if she were a scorpion.
“I suppose you concluded you’d catch more flies with honey than vinegar,” he said scathingly. “It almost worked. You should’ve taken off the damned britches yourself. Then I might have plunged right into your warm welcome.”
Olivia blinked her eyes in the darkness, feeling the cool air as it touched her bare breasts where before Samuel’s warm body had cocooned her. He had moved abruptly away from her, awakening her and leaving her chilled. Awareness of what had transpired flooded her mind with horror! She must have crawled closer to him seeking warmth and he believed she had tried to seduce him!
“If I wanted to seduce you—which I certainly do not—I would have taken off my britches—which I obviously did not,” she said in a rush as she pulled her shirt back together and groped for her own blanket, pulling it up and huddling beneath it, grateful that the darkness hid them both. She succeeded only partially in stifling a sob. “Don’t blame me for your lust.”
His only reply was a series of snarled curses and the loud rustling of his bedroll when he settled himself back into it, as far from her as he could get and still remain within the shelter of the crowded tent.
When Olivia awakened in the morning, Samuel was gone. The small tent seemed somehow larger and very empty as she stared at the flat grassy space where his bedroll had been. How had he managed to pack it up and leave without awakening her? She could hear the boisterous curses of the men, the clank of cook pots and rustle of tents being pulled down.
As remembrance of the disastrous encounter returned in the merciless light of morning, she sat up and put her head on her knees, hugging them in abject misery. What must he think of her now? How could she face him after what they almost did? She huddled there for several minutes until she heard footsteps approaching. Then a man cleared his throat and called out to her.
“Mademoiselle St. Etienne. It is Manuel Lisa and I must speak with you.”
Chapter Eleven
What do you mean, he’s gone!” Olivia croaked, staring at Manuel Lisa’s swarthy countenance with an expression of horror and disbelief on her face.
“Señorita St. Etienne, I try to explain to you,” Lisa said in his halting, heavily accented English, spreading his hands in a placating gesture. “The colonel, he must travel to the Big Osage. Their village, it is a day’s journey up the Osage River, not far.”
“Then he’ll rejoin us in a couple of days?” she asked suspiciously, not liking the way the barrel-chested little Spaniard refused to meet her eyes.
Lisa shrugged. “If all goes as he hopes, it is possible...but if he must go farther into Osage country, quien sabe? That is why he gives me this.” He handed her a letter signed by Samuel.
Olivia perused it quickly. “It’s a letter of credit...to keep me at his house in St. Louis.” The amount was most generous—a thousand dollars, which she could draw upon from the Quinn Mercantile where the colonel had deposited his money. She blushed darkly, knowing the shrewd Spaniard had drawn his own conclusions about her relationship with Samuel. She was under his protection but not affianced. She was the Long Knife's woman. In effect, his whore. And last night she had almost become so in fact.
“I will return you to St. Louis as soon as I deposit my cargo at the forts. I must attend my business affairs. Then the journey downstream will take twelve to fourteen days, no more.”
“But how much longer to get upstream to the forts on the upper Missouri?” she asked, noting he had deliberately omitted that rather vital detail.
Lisa sighed. “With a good wind to fill the sails we will gain five to ten days,” he replied, using the fingers of his right hand to give visual punctuation to his remarks.
“How long for the entire trip, Señor Lisa?”
“Perhaps two months. But fear nothing. I have given my word to your colonel. I, Manuel Lisa, will keep you safe. I have promised,” he said with finality, nodding his head as if that settled the matter.
Olivia could see that arguments or cajolery would avail her nothing. Perhaps tears? Unlikely. This was a seasoned veteran of decades on the rivers who had his life savings tied up in this trading venture. He would not jeopardize it for one stowaway female, even if she managed to weep a bucket of tears! “When do we leave, Señor Lisa?” she asked with diplomatic meekness.
* * * *
After two more days of gathering information and smuggling food into her bedroll, Olivia was ready to strike out. If “her colonel” could walk up the Osage River, she, by damn, could walk down the Missouri. After all, they had only come a little over a week, or was it two, upriver from the last settlement at St. Charles. Here and there along the way they had passed isolated farms and a few small riverfront outposts. Thankfully she had squelched her first impulse to tear Samuel’s letter of credit into a dozen tiny bits and throw them in Lisa’s face. For once prudence—or was it a growing sense of self-preservation—led her to curb her temper and hold onto the letter. She hoped to trade it for a horse and enough food to see her back to St. Louis.
I will not endure another two or three months in this hellish wilderness just because of Samuel Shelby. After all, it was his fault that she had been forced to flee St. Louis in the first place. Never mind that she had mistakenly headed in the wrong direction; she was going to correct that mishap this very night. As soon as everyone was asleep in their tents, she would slip from the boat where Lisa had insisted she spend the past several nights since Samuel’s treacherous desertion.
The bedroll was heavy, the scratchy strouding stuffed with hard biscuits and several pouches of greasy pemmican. Olivia supposed if she got hungry enough she could stomach the rancid stuff. There was a full moon and the sentry was posted at the stern of the boat. She could crawl over the bow and wade very carefully through the shallows undetected. Once on the bank, there was a brake of tall willow shoots to hide her. The only trick would be managing not to drop the unwieldy pack or the knife she had filched from a crate in the cabin box. It was a poor weapon, but even if she stole a rifle, she had not the slightest idea of how to load or fire it, so she had decided it was a heavy encumbrance not worth carrying.
Slipping off in the moonlight was not nearly so easy to accomplish as she had hoped. Bright light bathed the deck but the river shallows were shrouded in shadows cast by overhanging cottonwood limbs. The swift movement of the river did cover any noise she might make. When her feet touched the water a tiny hiss of misery escaped her lips. She knew it would be cold on her bare feet, but it was best to keep her boots with her gear, dry in her arms, not wet on her feet.
The water was only knee-high near the shore and the bow of the boat was moored firmly into the soft sandy bank. But treacherous small rocks, some lichen coated and slippery, others sharp as razors, were scattered along the riverbed. She bit her lip to keep from crying out as she made her way, one agonizing step at a time, to freedom. Balancing the bedroll was even more difficult than she had imagined. Several times she came within a gnat’s breath of drop
ping it in the water when she slipped or jerked back her foot from a sharp rock. By the time she reached the cover of the brake, her legs were going numb from the cold.
“At least I won ‘t feel how bad my feet hurt,” she muttered with grim humor as she carefully wended her way through the bracken to dry ground. The nearest campfire with tents scattered around it was only thirty feet away, but the flames had died to pale orange coals and the sound of loud snores vied with the croaking of bullfrogs on the still night air. She walked silently down the muddy beach until the fires were out of sight, then climbed to the top of the embankment about fifteen feet higher up.
Under the cover of scrub pines and cottonwoods, she could look down on the boat and the camp as she sat on the ground and pulled the dry boots over her cold and aching feet. Rough and miserable as her life with the rivermen had been, it was still one of relative safety. Once she left them, she would be completely alone in a strange and hostile wilderness. Could she attempt it—should she attempt it?
Ahead lay unknown dangers, but here lay another two to three months of unremitting drudgery and shame. Here was where Samuel Shelby had deserted her, turning her over to Manual Lisa as he would any other nonessential possession he might value only enough to make minimal arrangements for its “storage.” She turned her back on the comfort of the fires and began to walk inland, steering a course around the camp and then back to the riverbank downstream from where the boat was moored.
