Brides of Prairie Gold (24 page)

And it hurt. The sight of their shared passion stabbed through Mem like a blade. Grinding her knuckles against her lips, she fought to smother a cry of pain, tried to focus her thoughts on her headache instead of the cause of it.

Two commands screamed inside her head. Forget Webb Coate. Run away before the pain of watching destroys you.

Whirling blindly, she ran crashing out of the cottonwoods and undergrowth, stumbling and tripping. Choking on tears, she fled toward the dying flicker of the campfires.

Webb held her against him so tightly that she could hardly breathe. Moving in a way that made her wild with urgency, he rubbed against her in an exciting, shocking grind of iron-hard manhood that she felt through her skirts and in the hot pit of her stomach. The volcanic thrill of what he was doing brought sweat to his brow and hers. Her pantaloons were wet with her readiness for him. So crazed with passion was she that she didn't notice her swollen lips or swelling breasts. All she thought about was the hard thrilling pressure of his manhood teasing her own need, driving her insane with wanting him.

Then she heard someone running through the underbrush.

Wrenching her lips from Webb's, she froze in horror. Her fingernails dug into his shoulders. "Someone's out there!"

"Whoever it is," he murmured in a husky voice, "he's moving away, not toward us."

Shock glazed her eyes. "Someone saw us!"

He smoothed a hand over her cheek; his thumb caressed her lips. "If he saw anything, it was only my back." His other hand rested high on her waist, just beneath her breast and her wildly beating heart. "He couldn't have seen you."

Augusta stared into black eyes smoldering with desire. She saw moonlight on darkly bronzed skin, saw his grandfather's nose and wide, contoured lips. She saw high broad cheekbones and fluttering black hair.

She saw an Indian.

Panic and revulsion exploded in her heart. An Indian had touched her, had kissed her. Shock sucked the strength out of her knees and she almost collapsed to the ground.

Oh, dear God. What had she done? Had she lost her mind?

Moonlight had destroyed her reason. She had allowed this dirty half-breed to place his hands on her body. He had dared to press his uncivilized, barbaric lips to the lips of a Boyd.

Drawing back, teeth bared, she slapped his face hard enough to snap his head to one side. Instantly, his hand dropped from her waist and he stepped backward. His expression shifted in the moonlight and shadows until only his burning eyes indicated the unexpectedness of her blow and his anger.

"You assaulted me!" she hissed, shaking with the horror of it. Frantically, she rubbed at her arms, trying to scrape off the touch of him, trying to scrub away the memory of his strong arms binding her close to his chest.

He said nothing. He stood silent and rigid, his stare piercing her. A cool breeze stirred his hair, teased along the fringes adorning his leggings and jacket. He stood so still that she could not see his chest move.

"You filthy savage!" She lashed the words at him, shaking so badly that she had to lean one hand on the tree trunk to remain standing. "How dare you touch a white woman? If I tell the others, they'll cut out your heathen heart! They'll hang you!"

His stare was so powerful that she almost faltered. Then she felt the moisture cooling on the pantaloons that rubbed her inner thighs and she could have wept for the hideous shame he had visited upon her.

"Barbarian! Rapist! I'll if you ever come near me again, I'll"

But he had faded into the darkness like a shadow. Frantically, she scanned the cottonwoods, searching for a trunk that appeared to move.

When she was certain that she was alone, she threw herself to the coarse grass and sobbed uncontrollably.

The hollowness of her threats devastated her. There was no circumstance under heaven that could force her to tell anyone what had happened here tonight. She would rather die than admit she had permitted an Indian to touch her.

And she could not claim that he had tried to rape her. Someone had seen Augusta Boyd step willingly into the arms of a filthy half-breed. Someone had seen her locked in his savage embrace, flushed with eagerness and desire.

Waves of shame and anguished regret rocked her body, and she wished the earth would open and swallow her. If only she knew who had spied on them, who had seen. If only she could explain somehow. If only she knew who it was, she would offer that person everything she owned to hold his or her tongue.

Fresh horror bit into her chest as she realized that someone in camp could destroy her with an innuendo, with a few words. A storm of weeping shook her frame.

She hated Webb Coate. This was his fault. She wished with all her suffering soul that he was dead.

Beating the ground with her fists, she wept and thought that she could not bear this latest tragedy. He was an Indian) . A heathen who undoubtedly had never seen a tablecloth, who would have the table manners of an animal. Despite the cultured speech he mimicked, she just knew he couldn't read, couldn't even sign his name. What Indian could? Everything he owned, he carried on the back of his horse. He was nothing. A nobody!

And she had let this savage illiterate nobody, this worthless barbarian put his hands on her.

She wanted to die.

Cody glanced up from the arms wagon as Webb strode out of the darkness. The look in his burning black eyes caused the men around the fire to fall silent and exchange uneasy looks.

"Trouble?" Heck Kelsey asked, standing. He dropped a hand to the pistol at his waist.

Webb strode past them without speaking, moving toward the molasses wagons.

John Voss swallowed a last bite of cornbread, then also stood, his frown following Webb. "His gun's holstered," he observed. "Guess it ain't trouble that concerns us."

Cody flipped his cigar toward the fire pit. "Those who aren't on watch better turn in. It's a short night."

After the boys dispersed, he walked to the second molasses wagon and leaned against the back wheel, sensing Webb at the tail. He gazed at the stars, letting a minute pass. "You want to talk about it?"

"No."

Cody nodded and traced the Big Dipper, following to the North Star. He removed another cigar from his vest pocket, holding it between his fingers without searching for a light.

"Lucy Hastings died," he said finally.

Cody didn't know a single wagonmaster who had crossed the continent without burying a few passengers; an experienced master knew the grueling journey would exact a toll. But it never came easy. Death was always a shock. And the loss of a passenger felt like a personal failure.

He should have warned them not to drink ground water, just as he had warned them not to drink the alkali waters of the Platte. He should have chosen a different place to square the wagons. He should have found her earlier. He should have sent Miles Dawson to discover if there was a doctor on the train ahead or behind them. He should have been God.

Angrily, he glared at the cloudy sweep of the Milky Way. At the start of every journey he told himself that any passengers were merely high-paying freight. He told himself that he didn't care about their lives. His job was to get them where they had paid to go, not to nursemaid them, not to care about them.

But it didn't work. The trip was too long. They lived too closely together, too interdependently. Like it or not, want it or not, they came to know each other. And sometimes to care.

Damn it to hell, Lucy was only seventeen years old. In some societies, she would still have been regarded as a child. Scowling at the starlight, he saw her fresh smiling face. A preacher's daughter who sang hymns while she milked Sarah's cow, who read Bible verses when they stopped for the noon rest on Sundays. A pretty woman-child who gathered wildflowers while she walked, who laughed aloud at the antics of the prairie dogs.

She would never know a husband's embrace, would never hold her own child in her arms. Lucy Hastings's brief flame had flickered and died before her life had really begun.

The irony of Lucy Hastings's death was that without her, the bride train would never have formed. When her father, the Reverend Hastings, accepted young Reverend Quarry's request for Lucy's hand, he had worried about sending his daughter unaccompanied across the country. His concerns and Paul Quarry's response had resulted in Quarry organizing the bridegrooms' search for wives. Because her father and her fiance had been concerned about Lucy's safety, Cody's train existed.

Without Lucy Hastings, none of the women on the train would have had bridegrooms waiting in Oregon. But Lucy's intended bridegroom was the only man among them who knew and loved his intended bride and would genuinely grieve her death.

Cody knew what Paul Quarry would feel. But at least Quarry's grief would not be scalded by the knowledge of betrayal.

His stomach tightened when he imagined Reverend Paul Quarry reading the letter Cody would post at Fort Laramie. Once, he had received a similar letter.

With a start he straightened and swore silently, then walked around the end of the molasses wagon. Webb had gone.

For a long moment, he peered through the darkness toward the spot where Webb rolled out his blankets. It wasn't often that Webb allowed anything to penetrate his stoic serenity. Cody's gut instinct was to guess a woman. It had to be Augusta Boyd.

He shook his head. "To each his own preference." Hell, Webb would probably think Cody was mad if Webb knew how much time he wasted thinking about Perrin Waverly. Who was he to wonder at Webb's attraction to the selfish and imperious Miss Augusta Boyd?

Before turning in, he walked the perimeters of the camp, checking that all fires were extinguished, that the horses were securely tethered. When he reached Perrin Waverly's tent, he lingered beside the flap, picturing her inside asleep. This time he didn't indulge in any romanticized versions; he tried to picture her as she probably was. Dressed in her day gown, her braid unraveling, her lips slightly parted. It disturbed him to realize that reality was as arousing as the romanticized version.

What would he be feeling now if he were burying Perrin Waverly tomorrow morning instead of Lucy Hastings?

He stared down at the dusty tent flap. Never again did he intend to trust or give a woman the power to wound or destroy. It was a thousand times preferable to suffer an eternity of loneliness than to let some woman carve chunks out of his soul.

After a minute, he clenched his jaw and made himself stride away from her tent.

My Journal, June, 1852. Lucy Hastings is dead. I looked at her for a long time, trying to understand why he was so upset. I never saw him alone with her.

I'm confused and more anxious every day. I'm afraid that he's sending me secret messages that I don't understand, so I think he's ignoring me. It must be that I fail to understand. Now I'm worried that he's disappointed in me, that I have failed him.

That would explain why he seems so eager to meet the whore every night. He's disappointed in me. He's punishing me. He wants me to see them together to test me.

Sometimes his silence makes me so furious that I want to punish him too. I imagine ways to do it. Then I get frightened by my thoughts and I have to punish myself. I resent that he does this to me, that he makes me think bad thoughts about him. Does he think I enjoy hurting myself?