Dorothy Garlock - [Wabash River] (17 page)

She shook her head. “I can’t.” Her voice was strained as she tried to keep laughter at bay.

“I could tickle it out of you like Juicy used to do.” His smile widened and creases appeared in his cheeks next to his mouth. He looked young, boyish. She had never seen him smile like that.

“Do you remember that?” Laughter bubbled up and made both Eleanor and Gavin turn to look at them, but Rain and Amy had eyes only for each other.

“I remember a lot of things. You never held anything back. Always said what came to your mind.”

“I can’t this time. It was . . . an indelicate thought. Not one a lady should discuss.”

“Not with anyone?”

“Well, not a man, unless—”

“Is it something Libby would tell Farr?”

“There’s nothing that Libby wouldn’t tell Farr. They’re like one.”

“I’ll wait,” he said, his smile gentle now. “But don’t forget it so you can tell me . . . later.”

Rain got to his feet, then held out his hand and Amy put hers in it. When she was standing beside him, he continued to hold on to her hand for a long moment, then he squeezed it gently before he released it. He had such a tender expression on his face that a delicious weakness flooded through her.

Amy was in a happy daze as she went about the chore of putting away the food box. She remembered each one of his words as if they were a treasure. Later, he had said,
Don’t
forget so you can tell me later.
It was almost as if he were saying that later they would be like Libby and Farr. Could she have misunderstood his meaning? She hoped with all her heart that she had not.

Gavin and Rain hitched up the team. Amy tied her horse to the back of the wagon, climbed up on the seat and took the reins in her gloved hands.

Eleanor, fuming because she was being ignored, stood waiting, refusing to climb up the wheel without assistance. Rain seemed not to notice. Before Gavin mounted his horse, he walked over to her, gripped her waist with his huge hands and lifted her as if she weighed no more than a doll. When she turned and bent to sit down she felt a sharp pain on her bottom.

“Ohh!” She let out a startled cry, whirled around and almost lost her balance. She grabbed on to the bow that held the canvas cover. When she had righted herself, the big Scot was behind the wagon and out of sight. Her anger flared. “Damn you for a whore’s son!” she swore. “I’ll see you horsewhipped!”

Amy turned to Eleanor. Suppressed rage was expressed in the flare of her nostrils and the tightness of her mouth.

“What’s the matter?”

“He pinched me!”

“Oh? You must be mistaken.”

“Damn it! I know what he did. He pinched me.”

“I don’t see how he could through all those skirts. How many petticoats do you have on? Four or five?”

“I might have known that you’d side with him. You just see what Willy has to say when we get there.”

Rain motioned that he was ready to move out. Amy cracked the whip over the backs of the team. They strained at the harnesses and the wagon began to roll. Rain set the pace again and Gavin rode in the rear. Each man was armed with a rifle, shot bag and powder horn, and Amy’s rifle was on the floorboards beneath her feet.

“Tell me about . . . Willy,” Amy said once they were moving smoothly. Any conversation at all, she decided, made the time go faster.

Surprised by Amy’s civil tone, Eleanor was silent for a moment before she began to speak.

“He’s a refined, sensitive gentleman who has a great career ahead of him.”

“Do you love him?”

“I will, once we’re wed.”

“How do you know that?”

“I just know it, that’s all.” For a fleeting moment Amy thought she heard a wistful note in her voice, but she dismissed the thought.

“I don’t know why you think you’ll love him
after
you’re wed if you don’t before.”

“How do I know if I love him or not?” Eleanor snapped. “I don’t even know him. Aunt Gilda said he was taken with me when I was a child.”

“Haven’t you seen him since?”

“No, but he writes charming letters.”

“Well . . . he must know what he’s doing.”

“What do you mean?” Eleanor’s head jerked around and her lavender eyes blazed with anger. “My blood is every bit as good as his. He needs a wife of breeding if he’s going to get ahead in the military. There’s more to being an officer than directing men on a battlefield, you know. I’ll be in charge of the social part of his career. I’ll bring some refinement to his home.”

“I thought you said he
was
refined. What I meant was, you don’t seem cut out for the rough life you’ll have at an army post.”

“Willy will take care of me.” The tone of her voice conveyed her irritation. “I was taught that if I conduct myself at all times as a lady should, which doesn’t mean riding astride in leather britches and letting my hair hang down my back like a savage,” she added scathingly, “I would be taken care of by the stronger sex—men.”

“Humph!” Amy ignored her sarcasm. “Maybe you will and maybe you’ll be taken advantage of.” Amy glanced at the woman beside her and wondered how old she was. She asked her. “How old are you?”

“That’s what I mean. A woman of breeding would never ask another woman her age.”

Amy laughed. “Why are you hiding it? You’ve got a few years on me, but what difference does it make? My sister, Libby, is almost eight years older than I am, and she’s the prettiest woman in the territory.”

“According to who?” Eleanor threw Amy a piercing look.

“According to her husband, that’s who. He loves her to distraction.”

Eleanor lapsed into silence, thinking how little she knew about the man she had promised to marry. It had been her aunt’s idea to contact Will Bradford, but neither of them had the slightest idea that he would be sent to the frontier, or that he would expect them to go to some godawful place called Belle Point. They had been trying to figure out a way to return to Charleston and still have Will take care of them when Gilda came down with the fever. They spent almost all of their small hoard of coins on the doctors who promised they could make her well, and so there was nothing Eleanor could do when Rain Tallman came for her but to go with him.

As the afternoon wore on, Amy found herself feeling a little sorry for Eleanor Woodbury. She would hate to be traveling to a man she didn’t know or love and be expected to share his bed.

It was sundown when they reached the Little Wabash. Rain came alongside.

“Pull up. McCourtney will drive across. I’ll test the route first.”

Amy pulled the team to a halt and wound the reins about the brake handle. She turned and climbed down over the wheel, glad to have her feet on solid ground. Gavin dismounted and tied his horse to the back of the wagon.

Amy watched as Rain’s horse made its way carefully into the moving water. By the time he reached the middle of the stream the water was belly-high on the horse, then it began to recede. Before he reached the other side, Rain turned, moved downstream a few feet and came back.

Amy had put the bridle on her horse and was mounted. “I can lead Gavin’s horse.”

Rain nodded, then pointed his finger. “See that topped cedar? Head straight for that. The river bed seems solid, but it’s slippery. Be careful. If you get into trouble, let Gavin’s horse go. We can pick him up later. Come on, Gavin. The water will be higher on the mules, but I’ll ride in front of them and they’ll not be so likely to panic.”

The crossing was slow but uneventful. Amy waited for Rain and the wagon, and when it rolled up the bank and on to the level trail he moved up beside her.

“It’s good we got here when we did. It may be too high to cross by morning.”

“How do you know that?” Amy asked.

“It rained up north. Didn’t you notice the cloud bank or the green leaves floating downstream? That cloud bank is moving around to the west. It’s likely to rain before morning. We’ll camp up there on that high rise.”

The light was fading when they finally stopped. Gavin jumped down to unhitch the mules.

Amy glanced up to see that Eleanor had stood and was trying to back down over the wheel as she had done, but her voluminous skirts had preceded her and she had stepped on them. She hung there, searching blindly with her other foot for something to step on. She began to lose her grip on the wagon bow and let out a small cry. Gavin sprang to her and caught her as she fell backward.

“There ye be,” he said and set her on her feet. “Ye ain’t properly dressed out to be climbin’, though ye went about it the right way.”

She shrugged away. “I would have managed without your interference.”

“And ye’d a been on yet stubborn arse, missy,” he growled before returning to the mules.

Nine

The evening air had a bite in it. While the men took care of the animals, Amy hastily built a small fire in a circle of stones and set a pot of water over it to heat. Eleanor hugged her shawl around her shoulders and walked impatiently back and forth between the edge of the woods and the wagon. Amy had never known a woman like her. She didn’t offer to help with the meal or assist in any way. Her attitude showed that she fully expected the others to wait on her as if they were her servants. That irritated Amy, but not enough for her to make an issue of it. In a way she pitied the beautiful woman who was so unsuited to the frontier way of life.

Rain and Gavin picketed the animals close by, put the harnesses and saddles beneath the wagon, then began to build a shelter. Rain threw a loop over the top of a young sapling and pulled it down for Gavin to hold while he brought down the top of another some six feet away. They tied the two tops together, forming a bow, and quickly cut off the small limbs. By the time the water in the pot was boiling and Amy was dropping in small chunks of meat and potatoes, a crossbar had been set in two Ys, a canvas stretched over the frame and secured to stakes Gavin pounded in the ground. The men had put up the shelter quickly with only a few words passing between them.

The wind came up and scattered sparks from the cookfire.

“It seems we’re in for a bit of a blow,” Gavin said. “I best be lashin’ down the wagon.”

Rain looked toward the west. Blue-black clouds rolled toward them. “While you do that I’ll lay in some dry wood for a breakfast fire.”

Darkness had fallen when Rain returned with an armload of wood. He stored it under the canvas shelter. He brought the next load to the cookfire, knelt down beside Amy and poked short pieces of sticks beneath the boiling pot. Into the stew Amy dropped crushed dried sage leaves from the bag of seasoning Liberty had insisted she bring along.

“Smells good.” Rain’s hand came down on her shoulder and squeezed gently. “You may have to move it under the canvas, or it’s liable to get watered down.”

“It should be done enough to eat in another few minutes.” She laid the seasonings bag aside and poked at the fire with a stick. “There’s bread to go with it and, if the rain holds off, tea.”

“I didn’t ask you to come along to do all the work, Amy.” Rain sat back on his heels and pushed his hat to the back of his head.

She looked into his eyes and smiled. “I know you didn’t. But this is something I can do better than you.”

“Oh, you think so? You may change your mind after you’ve eaten my roasted corn and fish baked in river mud.”

“River mud? Ugh! Wait until I fix you some rolled in cornmeal and fried in pork fat.”

“The first chance I get, I’ll catch—” A loud clap of thunder drowned out his words and brought them both to their feet.

Eleanor ran to Rain and clasped his arm with both hands. “Oh, Rain, I’m so frightened.”

“Of the storm?”

“Yes . . . and the Indians and . . . wild beasts . . .”

“The Indians here are peaceful. Occasionally you run into a renegade, just as you run into bad white men. But I believe we are reasonably safe here.”

“But the storm—”

“You’ll be all right in the wagon. Gavin has lashed it down. There’s no danger of it tipping over.”

“Tipping over? Oh!”

A dazzling flash lit the clearing, followed by darkness and a tremendous clap of thunder that made Eleanor press her hands over her ears. A few drops of rain hurtled down, plopping on her head. She let out a small shriek. When she lifted her shawl to cover her head the wind almost tore it from her hands.

“Get in the wagon.” Rain gave Eleanor a gentle shove.

Gavin was waiting there to help her climb up onto a box so she could get inside.

Amy scooped up her cooking supplies, dumped them in the food box and carried it to the wagon while Rain set the iron pot and the teakettle under the canvas shelter. A blast of wind swept through the clearing before they could put out the cookfire and pushed a burning ember along the ground toward the wagon. Gavin quickly stomped it out with his heavy boots before the grass beneath the wagon could catch and burn.

There was nothing for Amy to do but climb up into the wagon with Eleanor and wait out the storm. In just a few minutes the rain came down in sheets, driven by gusty winds. Eleanor sat on the edge of her bunk with her hands over her ears. Amy felt her way in the darkness to the front of the wagon and tied down the flap. One of the men had lowered the flap at the back and secured it. It was pitch-dark inside the wagon. Over the sound of the rain pounding the canvas top, Amy heard little whimpering sounds of fright coming from Eleanor. She sat down on the bunk beside her.

“It’s just a spring storm. It won’t last long. Don’t be afraid.” To her surprise Eleanor turned on her with a torrent of angry words.

“I’m not afraid of this damn storm!” Lightning came again followed by thunder. “I hate going to Belle Point. I hate that damn riverman. I hate you! I hate this whole trip and . . . this is only the first day.”

“Why did you tell Rain you were afraid of the storm?”

“Oh, you! You don’t know anything about men at all,” she snapped. “They love to feel protective toward a pretty, helpless woman. It makes them feel big and important.”

“I admit that I don’t know much about how to make a man feel
big
and
important,
but I don’t lie, either,” Amy said with heavy sarcasm.