A Distance Too Grand

by Regina Scott

  Ben could only be thankful. Matthew Pero had photographed many a landmark across the country, Meg at his side. Their stereographic views were famous, enjoyed by thousands. He had no doubt she knew her way around a camera. But she couldn’t appreciate the dangers she’d be facing. His mother and sister had hesitated to join his father when he’d been made commander of the fort. Arizona had been its own territory for less than a decade and was known more for its vast vistas and copper than any sort of society. Likely his mother and Diana would never come now that the Colonel had disappeared.

  And would he have any chance to discover why his father had gone missing if he delayed much longer?

  Something of what he was feeling must have shown on his face, for she took a step closer and laid her hand on his arm. “Please, Ben. I need the work. I won’t let you down. Take me with you.”

  How could he? He could think of a dozen ways she might be harmed by nature alone. The wildly fluctuating temperatures, scant water, predators like mountain lion, vermin like rattlesnake. Flash floods, wildfire, lightning storms. The glory of God’s creation was nearly as commanding as his father.

  And he couldn’t tell her the other dangers he feared.

  Yet it was already August. They had at best two months, barely enough time for the survey, before snow began to fall along the North Rim. The Grand Canyon, they called it, and everything he’d read said searching for a way to ford it by wagon would be a great adventure, the kind he’d always imagined. That was why he’d abandoned his father’s dreams for him and become an engineer instead of a cavalryman—to explore new lands, chart new territory.

  Besides, the Army Corps of Engineers had invested considerable funds equipping a survey team and a photographer, the effort planned months ago and plagued by delays. The work was to augment the efforts of the Wheeler Survey of 1869 to find a wagon road across the West. But Wheeler had his eye on bigger game. He was proposing to document and map the land south of the one hundredth meridian, with the hope to identify locations for Army outposts and opening the area to settlers. Ben heartily agreed with the approach. He’d served on the 1869 survey and knew the potential.

  Finding a way to cross the Grand Canyon was critical. Troops, settlers, and the sutlers to supply them had to make long detours east or west to avoid it. Congress wanted to change that. Already John Wesley Powell was making a second attempt to navigate the Colorado River down the canyon with a government-backed team of ten handpicked men and specially built boats. If Ben didn’t leave within the week, he’d have to wait until next May.

  And he’d lose all opportunity to learn what had happened to his father.

  “Do you have any idea how dangerous this could be?” he demanded.

  She squeezed his arm. “Yes. My father always said nature would kill him if man didn’t do it first. I’m not afraid, Ben. This is a grand adventure. Think of the vistas we could capture.”

  Think how easily she could recapture your heart.

  He shoved the thought away. He was immune to Meg Pero’s charm. Her sweet smile, the touch of her hand, wasn’t why he was about to agree with her outrageous request.

  He couldn’t leave without a photographer, and she was the only one available.

  “Very well,” he said and was rewarded with a barely suppressed squeal of joy. “Join me at the enlisted mess at five, and you can meet the rest of the team.”

  2

  Corporal Dent showed her to her quarters.

  “We don’t have lady visitors much,” he explained as he opened the door to the stuffy little guardhouse. “Leastwise, not unmarried ones. You can bed down here for a night or two.” He dropped her case, which he had insisted on carrying, on the packed red dirt floor.

  Meg glanced around at the narrow wood bunk, the barred window high in the wall. “I’ve had worse than a jail cell.” She held out her hand. “I’ll be fine, so long as you leave me a key.”

  The corporal reddened as he handed it over. “And you’ll want to bar the door before you go to sleep, ma’am.” He scuttled out as if afraid of being locked in with her.

  Bar the door. She certainly hoped she needn’t take such precautions, but she would just in case. Funny that the colonel in charge of the fort hadn’t invited her to stay in the officers’ quarters, but if he was so determined to follow regulations, as Corporal Dent had said, perhaps this was the most he’d offer a civilian.

  Either that, or Ben was more vengeful and influential than she’d thought.

  She went to twitch the wool blanket off the thin tick. Nothing moved, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t infested with lice or bedbugs or some other sort of creature. She’d bring in her bedroll. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d slept on the ground.

  Melancholy beckoned, as it had so often since her father had died. How could he have left her alone? He was the only family she remembered, her mother having died in an accident when Meg was four and her aunt and cousin occasional hoteliers between travels. They believed it their duty to see her civilized. She was thankful they’d never quite managed it. Whenever Aunt Abigail started prosing on about schooling and settling down, Papa would announce a new scheme and whisk Meg off.

  To capture crystal-clear waterfalls in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.

  Slender boats gliding through the Erie Canal.

  Impossibly tall buildings in New York City.

  Massive monuments and churches in the nation’s capital.

  Cocky cadets at West Point.

  They had been a team, inseparable. So why had he let his illness progress so far without consulting a physician? He must have known he was sick. Why not seek help? He went through money as quickly as he earned it, but surely there’d been enough for his care. All that talk of training her—mixing the collodion on which the picture formed, preparing the plates, having her set up the shot and develop the negatives—all to mask that his health was failing. If only she’d guessed, but she’d been so happy he’d finally fully trusted her with the work that she hadn’t questioned his orders.

  And now he was gone.

  Tears were gathering again. She dashed them away with her fingers. The time for grief was over. She had one opportunity, this opportunity, to make herself a future, and she wasn’t going to waste it being maudlin. If she distinguished herself on this expedition, the Army might be persuaded to hire her for others, so long as another lady was in the group. And if she could take the stereographic views she hoped, she could sell them and live off the income for some time.

  She located the enlisted mess by a quarter to five. It was a room set off the back of the barracks. Like the other buildings at Fort Wilverton, the square structure was constructed of adobe brick, made from the soil of the plateau. The Army could have had little choice in its building material. The few trees in the area were stunted things of no use in making lumber, and it would have taken years to transport enough planks for the dozen or so facilities. As it was, they must have brought most of their furnishings with them, for the two long tables and flanking benches in the shadowy mess looked worn beyond the years they could have been in use here.

  Four men were gathered at the closest table, and they were all staring at her. The lone woman among them rose from the bench and strode toward Meg. She was perhaps forty years of age, with dull brown hair tightly wrapped to her head, her figure bulky in the loose calico shirt and denim riding skirt. Her boots thumped with each step across the hard-packed floor.

  She stuck out her hand, back spotted and nails chipped. “Dot Newcomb. You must be Miss Pero.”

  “That’s me,” she said, shaking Dot’s hand. “I understand I have you to thank for the opportunity to join this expedition.”

  Dot cracked a smile. “First time I’ve been called upon to play chaperone. And we may need one. No one told me you were a beauty.”

  Meg felt warm. “I’m here as a photographer, nothing more.”

  Dot cocked her head. “You sure? Some of the boys at the fort have fancy careers ah
ead of them, if they don’t fall prey to sunstroke or rattlesnake.”

  “I’m sure,” Meg promised. “I just want to take pictures.”

  “Like your father.” Dot nodded. “I heard of him. He took the picture of Niagara Falls that was in the paper. It was like you were about to go over.”

  Meg smiled. “Because he went out to the farthest point, beyond where anyone would have considered it safe. Nothing was more important to my father than getting the shot.”

  Dot linked arms with her. “I feel the same way about my rifle and whatever’s heading for the cook pot that night. Come on, then. I’ll introduce you to the others.”

  She drew Meg over to the group of men. The two youngest popped to their feet.

  “Oh, sit down,” Dot said with a wave of her free hand. “This is an expedition, not a fancy tea. Meet Miss Meg Pero. She’s our photographer.”

  The privates, judging by the lack of insignia, elbowed each other and grinned as they returned to their seats. One blond, the other a brunet, both tall and wiry, they reminded her of the cadets she’d met at West Point: bright, eager, ready for anything even if they had no idea what they might face.

  The large-boned bearded man near the head of the table looked her up and down. “Where’d you learn to take a picture?”

  She’d heard the question too many times to not have an answer. “My father was a photographer. I’ve been helping him since I was eight. I’d be happy to show you my portfolio.”

  He frowned as if he wasn’t sure of the word, but Dot aimed a scowl around at them all. “No need to question the lady, now. Captain Coleridge approved her, and I approve her. That should be good enough for you.”

  They all dropped their gazes, but Meg thought she heard a grumble. Dot tugged her toward the foot of the table.

  “They’ll be fine,” she assured Meg as she slid onto a bench. “And if they aren’t, the Captain and I will deal with it.”

  “Let me deal with it,” Meg insisted, seating herself opposite the woman. “I need to prove to them I can stand on my own.”

  Dot leaned forward to gaze down the table. “Shouldn’t be too hard. Most of them are used to me, so another lady in the group shouldn’t seem so odd. But I’d watch out for that big fellow on the end who questioned you. That’s Rudy Pike. He’s traveled all up and down these lands and likes to brag about it. He’s our guide.”

  Big as a bear, with dark hair and a full beard to match, Mr. Pike hunched over the table in his homespun, gnarly hands working at peeling a wizened apple with a knife large enough to carve a tree.

  “The fellow across from him is Corporal Christopher Adams,” Dot went on. “Educated fellow. You can tell by the way he talks. Fussy, though. He keeps all the notes and specimens.”

  The corporal was as thin as the guide was broad. His hair was already beginning to recede from his high forehead, and, by the red of his skin, he’d forgotten to wear a hat a time or two.

  “The two youngsters are Frank Larson and Josiah Meadows. They’re greenhorns—showed up at the fort four months ago with the former commander.”

  “Colonel Coleridge?” Meg asked.

  Dot nodded. “Sad doings there. He rode off with a guide and never returned. I didn’t hold with the decision to stop searching. Neither did my Hank, our cartographer. That’s him coming in with the Captain.”

  Meg could see why the imposing, red-headed Hank Newcomb would have won Dot’s heart. He walked across the dirt floor as if he owned it and the fort around them, beard neat and head high. But one look at Ben Coleridge and all at once she was back at West Point.

  Papa had decided to become respectable, as he called it. He’d just finished months of photographing the war, leaving her for a time with Aunt Abigail’s endless lectures, and she’d wondered whether what he’d witnessed on the fields of death had motivated his change of heart. Regardless, he’d promised to give up traveling for a time to take photographs at the portrait studio in West Point, New York. After all, every cadet, faculty member, and their families wanted a photograph to commemorate their time at the prestigious academy. It had been a comfortable position, while Papa had been enamored of it. They’d had a house with a parlor, kitchen, and two bedrooms. And he’d been very understanding when she burned half his meals and forgot to make the beds because she was busy taking her own pictures of the area.

  And attempting to enter society.

  It had been a lark, an opportunity to see whether she really was missing anything by following her father. Reining in her usual enthusiasm and pretending to be a typical young lady had been a challenge, but she’d consoled herself with the thought that it was only temporary. If she made some gaffe, didn’t behave as expected, they would eventually forget after she and Papa moved on.

  Then one day, at a ball sponsored by an old Army friend of her father’s, the crowds had parted and there he’d stood.

  Tall, muscular, chin forward, arms akimbo, grin as bright as the brass buttons on his uniform. Like the privates here, his friends were elbowing him, patting him on the back as if to encourage him. He’d squared his shoulders and marched across the room.

  “Pardon me, ma’am,” he’d said to Meg, “but I’m on a mission for the Academy, and I need your assistance.”

  “A mission?” she’d asked, amused. “How could I possibly help?”

  “I assure you, you are critical to the mission’s success.” His words were serious, but his blue-gray eyes held a twinkle of silver. “You see, I promised myself I’d dance with the prettiest girl in attendance. It’s a matter of honor, for me and the Academy.” He offered her his arm. “Would you join me on the floor?”

  She sighed, swinging her fan by its silken cord. “What a shame. If you’d said the most intelligent or the most talented lady in attendance, I might have been tempted to accept. I fear you’ll have to make do with another lovely lady.”

  She turned and strolled away. Across the room, his friends were making shooing motions with their gloved hands. She wasn’t surprised when he appeared at her side again.

  “You must forgive me,” he said, sweeping her a bow. “We haven’t been introduced. I don’t even know your name. I couldn’t know how intelligent or talented you are, or you can be sure I would have praised those qualities.”

  Perhaps. But perhaps she’d just been a pretty girl across the room. While there was nothing wrong with that, she supposed, she wanted to be considered more than a beauty.

  She eyed the blue of his dress uniform. “You are studying military endeavors, are you not? Gather intelligence before approaching your target, sir.” She turned once more.

  This time he didn’t follow her, but she saw him moving from group to group, noticed the looks being directed her way. Her pulse started beating faster as he came closer for the third time.

  “Miss Pero,” he said with another bow, this one more respectful than bold. “I’m Ben Coleridge. I’m told you’re a photographer. I wonder if you’d be willing to share how you compose your shots.”

  She smiled at him. “I’d be delighted, Cadet Coleridge. Perhaps we could talk after we dance?”

  His grin had appeared as he’d offered her his arm once more.

  The memory faded as he approached the head of the table now. She’d sent him away one time too many, at the end. It was for his benefit, even if he hadn’t realized it then. She had tried, but whatever her talents, her pretentions to beauty, she would never be the kind of wife men seemed to expect. Certainly she was a poor choice for a rising officer. She was too outspoken, too determined to follow her own path. And nothing Ben Coleridge could say would change that.

  Looking down the table at the men and women he was about to command, Ben found his gaze stuck on Meg. She was leaning forward, eyes narrowed. He couldn’t tell what she was thinking, but that was nothing new. Her dismissal of him had proven that he’d never known her at all.

  As Newcomb went to sit next to his wife, the three cavalrymen who had been assigned to the survey—Adams,
Larson, and Meadows—came to attention. Ben nodded them back into their seats. “Gentlemen, ladies, have you all been introduced?”

  “Good enough,” Pike grumbled. He twisted his knife idly in his thick fingers. “You sure about bringing a woman on this trip?”

  “Hey!” Dot’s voice echoed against the rafters. “It’s two women, ya big galoot. And I’d like to see you cook a meal or take a picture anyone would recognize.”

  Something tugged at Meg’s mouth. A smile? Ben kept his face stern. “Every member of this expedition is critical to its success. You were each chosen for a specific skill. We have a job to do. I expect you to work together and do it.”

  The others nodded. Pike stuck the tip of his knife into the wood. “So, when do we leave?”

  “The day after tomorrow,” Ben told him. “Corporal Adams, double-check our supplies and equipment. We won’t have time to send for more. Private Larson, Private Meadows, make sure the mules are ready and loaded. Miss Pero can show you how to deal with the photographic equipment.”

  They both looked to Meg, who inclined her head as regally as a queen.

  “I trust you have a closed wagon or van for me?” she asked.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Larson promised, and Meadows nodded so eagerly he looked as if his clean-shaven chin was bouncing off his uniform.

  He’d have to watch those two. He could easily see them falling over themselves to please her. He’d done the same when he’d been about their age.

  Adams seemed less inclined to make a fool of himself, though he too directed his look toward Meg. “And I have the honor of driving it, miss.”

  Did he know how much of an honor? Meg was easily the most famous person on the team, even if some didn’t realize it.

  “And the route?” Pike asked, pulling his knife from the wood.

  “We’ll head due south,” Ben said, “work our way east onto the plateau, then south again until we hit rim territory. We should start to see portions of the canyon by late in the third day.”