Lady Lavender (15 page)

W
ash had no appetite for breakfast the next morning, but he did need coffee. All night he'd wrestled with nightmares: the first time he'd killed a Johnny Reb, the first time he'd kissed Laura Gannon behind the school house. The last time he'd seen her before the War, driving her own rig out of Smoke River on the day she was to marry him.

Maybe if he could sort all those blasted memories out, he'd be able to think straight.

The long table gradually filled up with boarders chattering about yesterday's shooting at the livery stable and whether it would rain on Sunday's Church Ladies' social. And… Where was Mrs. Nicolet and her charming daughter this morning?

Rooney tramped in and without a word settled into the chair next to him.

“Is little Manette better this morning?” the school-teacher who boarded with Mrs. Rose asked.

Rooney just grunted, and the woman turned her attention to the platter of pancakes in the center of the table. Half an hour later Jeanne entered, a silent Manette clinging to her hand. Jeanne nodded a Good Morning but said nothing and she did not look at Wash but seated herself and her daughter across the table from him. Rooney rose to fill her cup with hot coffee. Manette's cup he filled to the top with mostly milk and Jeanne added a splash of coffee.

Her gaze moved from the pancakes to the china cream pitcher on the sideboard, but she clearly avoided looking at Wash. Her mouth didn't look pinched like it had yesterday, but she wasn't smiling, either. She wasn't even close.

Wash lingered over a third cup of coffee, hoping she'd say something, but she remained as talkative as a fence post. Finally he couldn't stand it any longer. He pushed away from the table and stood up.

She didn't even glance at him.

But Rooney did. The older man met Wash's gaze and shrugged his shoulders. Wash could read the man's thoughts as if they were smoke signals.
Hell, I don't know what's goin' on with you two!

Wash wished he did. Last night Jeanne had been angry; today he didn't know what she was. Resigned, maybe. A lump of iron dropped into his stomach. Whatever she was feeling he'd better keep his mind off it; today he and his crew would be blasting through rock to carve out the Green Valley Cut.

He signed to Rooney and strode outside, purposely keeping his eyes away from the porch swing. He could still feel Jeanne's warmth next to him, still smell the fresh scent of her hair.

Out at the site, he unlocked the kegs of black powder and carefully parceled out bags of the stuff to Sam and the grinning team members lined up behind him. The Chinese sure loved things that exploded; each time a charge sent off, they stood rapt as if expecting colored streamers and shooting stars to pop out.

The workers reached the sheer granite face at the valley's end and progress along the Cut slowed to mere inches. All day the men pounded holes in the rock with iron hand drills and stuffed them with black powder. When the fuses were lit, each blast brought a shower of rocky shrapnel.

It was hot, sweaty labor. When a fuse didn't ignite, it was Wash who shimmied up the rock to inspect the failed charge and either relight the half-burned corded string or tamp in more explosive powder.

Made him sweat some. The headman, Sam, tried to wave him off. “Much danger, boss. Blow off hand.”

“Yeah, well someone has to do it.” Wash refused to imperil any of the crew under his supervision. He'd never sent a man into battle or to do a job that he himself wouldn't undertake, and he wasn't about to start now. Maybe he was a damn fool, but he felt responsible for his men.

Little by little the path blasted through the granite grew wide enough to allow the six-foot railroad ties and the steel rails that would be spaced four feet, eight
inches apart. By midday, both Wash and the crew were gray with sifted dust from the exploding rock. Even his face felt sandy with the acrid-smelling stuff.

About noon, Rooney rode in, took one look at the advancing Cut and then at Wash's dust-coated face and loosed a tirade of curses. “Ya crazy idiot, ya wanna get yerself blown to smithereens? Jeanne will never forgive you.”

“Then don't tell her!” Wash snapped. “A man does what he has to.” Besides, Jeanne wouldn't forgive him for much more than just handling the explosive powder.

Rooney leaned sideways on his strawberry roan and spit so close to Wash's boots he had to jump out of the way. “Huh! I s'pose right about now you find this easier than dealing with Jeanne.”

“Yeah? What would you know about Jeanne and me?”

“Enough. You might be riskin' your skin out here, but dyin' is a coward's way out.”

“Talk straight, Rooney. You know I'm no coward. What are you trying to say?”

Rooney rolled his eyes at the blue sky overhead. “Gettin' blowed up is one thing. Gettin' flayed down to your vitals by a riled-up woman is another. I figure you're just plain scared.”

“She's riled up, is she?”

Rooney spit at Wash's feet again. “Dunno. She's all closed up like a morning glory before the sun rises. She hasn't popped yet, but she sure will if you get yerself killed.”

“She still at the boardinghouse?”

“Nah. She took Little Miss and rode out to MacAllister's bunkhouse. Said she had some work to do.”

Wash wheeled away from his friend's piercing gaze and wished the roaring in his head would ease up. Might be he was still flinchy around loud noises, like he'd been after the War. Or maybe he was too close to the charges when they went off.

Or, dammit, maybe it was the constant imagined conversation with Jeanne that was getting his brain all mixed up. Anyway, his head was starting to hurt like hell.

He grabbed the bridle of Rooney's horse. “Either get down and help me finish this job or clear out and leave me be.”

Rooney snorted. “Seein' as how you're in a worse mood than Jeanne, I guess I'll clear out.” He tried to rein away, but Wash held onto the bridle. He softened his tone. “I'll see you at supper.”

Wash released his hold on the horse and Rooney sidled away from him. “And don't ask me to ride out an' keep an eye on Jeanne!”

“Why not?”

“Why not?” Rooney aimed another glob of spit close to Wash's dusty boots. “Because Jeanne is
your
responsibility, not mine. You're the one that got her all fussed up in the first place.”

“You're right, you old buzzard.”

Rooney cocked his ear toward him. “Well, that's more like it!”

“Now clear out.” Wash slapped Rooney's mount on the rump and watched with satisfaction as the horse
jolted into a canter. Anything to get rid of the man's incessant nattering. “Damned nosy, interfering, know-it-all Comanche,” he muttered.

Wash reached for the black powder tin looped to his belt and stopped short. He did want to protect Jeanne, keep her safe. He'd never looked at it that way before, but yes, he did feel responsible for her.

His chest tightened as if a huge fist were squeezing from the inside. He didn't want to feel responsible. Didn't want to feel a tie between Jeanne and himself. He let out a heavy groan. Didn't matter what he wanted, the tie was already there.

Taking in an uneven breath, he yelled for Sam. “Let's get back to blasting.”

Within ten minutes, the sound of rock ripping away from its bed of earth cut through the otherwise tranquil morning, and all through the long, powder-dusted afternoon, Wash thought about responsibility. Each time he crept up a slab of rock to fix a fuse that failed to ignite or fill the hole with more of the grainy black explosive, he rolled questions around in his brain. Questions about his past. About his life now.

About the years to come.

Dying would be easy; it was
living
that was hard. He thought that over while he reached into a drilled-out hole to make sure the fuse cord touched the charge. Being alive meant you felt things: a father's untimely death; a prison guard's brutality; a lover's betrayal. Being alive meant you got attached to things.

And people. The headache pounding in his temples kicked up a notch. He tamped down the powder and
resecured the fuse, then found his mind wandering again. It didn't take a genius to know he was attached to Jeanne. Not hog-tied and squealing, but…well…attached. He liked her more than he'd liked any woman, even Laura. But…

But.

Using the flint and steel he carried in his back pocket, he created a spark and bent to fan it with his breath. When the flame sizzled along the fuse cord, he shinnied down the rock face.

Just in time—the charge went off sooner than he expected. All he could do was turn away and hunch his shoulders against the rain of granite bits. Hell, it was like a thunderstorm of rocks.

When the dust cleared, Sam grabbed his arm and dragged him away through the smoke. “Not good you get hurt.” The Chinese man shook his forefinger in Wash's face. “Should not take chance.”

“Wait a minute, Sam. Who's the boss around here?”

In answer, Sam jabbed the same forefinger into Wash's chest. “Stupid. Dumb. Make no sense.” He kept jabbing.

Wash opened his mouth to protest, but his throat was so clogged he could make only a wheezing sound.

“Boss see now,” Sam crowed in triumph. “Voice gone.”

Wash shook his head, then gulped water from the canteen he carried at his hip. “I'm okay, Sam. Just parched.”

“And stupid,” the Chinese muttered. He loped back the ten yards to the advancing tracks.

Maybe so, Wash acknowledged. Maybe Rooney was right, he'd rather risk dying than living with more pain of the female variety.

A stab of agony shot across the top of his head and settled behind his eyes. When he turned to follow Sam back up to the rim he found he was unsteady on his feet. And dizzy, he noted after he'd gone two steps.

The six o'clock dinner gong reverberated into the canyon. Like well-organized ants, the crew lined up four abreast and double-timed it up to the rim and their waiting supper. Sam flashed him a grin as he jogged past.

Wash tried to smile back but the effort made his teeth ache.

What was the matter with him?

Nothing that an hour's rest and some whiskey wouldn't cure.

The young Chinese boy, Lin, led his horse over and Wash heaved his weight into the saddle, fighting off waves of nausea. Nothing serious, he told himself. Just the “too's” again: Too much coffee. Too much work. Too much thinking.

Too much remembering.

He kicked General into a canter but immediately slowed him to a gentle walk. Maybe he'd hit his head on something. He chuckled, then bit his lip against the surge of pain.

He'd hit his heart on something, too.

By the time he reached town, it was dusk, and
whenever he moved his head the throbbing in his temples and behind his eyes felt like a cannonball exploding in his brain. If he didn't look down at the ground his head didn't spin so bad, so he stared across the plain at the pink and orange sunset against the mountains on the far horizon. He carefully walked his mount to the boardinghouse and dismounted at the front gate. Mrs. Rose was clipping back her honeysuckle. Wash asked if her grandson could take his horse on over to the livery stable.

The landlady looked puzzled for a moment, then peered up at his face. “Land sakes, you look awful,” she blurted.

“Mostly rock dust,” he told her. “And maybe a bit of a headache.”

She shoved her hand-shears into her apron pocket and studied him more closely, looking especially hard at his eyes. “Go right on up to your room, Colonel, and I'll bring some tea.”

“Coffee?” he said hopefully.

“Tea,” she insisted. “Made from willow bark. Best remedy for a headache.”

He watched her young grandson lead General off down the street, then dragged himself up the stairs, shucked his boots and his hat, and stretched out on his bed. The quilt underneath him smelled of soap and sunshine.

His eyelids drifted shut. He lay without moving until he heard the thump of footsteps on the stairs and the swish of his door opening. Someone—Mrs. Rose—laid a cool washcloth across his face and settled a mug of
odd-smelling liquid onto his chest. She lifted one of his hands and positioned it around the mug to hold it in place.

“Sip it,” the woman ordered. She wiped the grit off his face with the cloth, wrung it out in a basin of water and laid it over his closed eyes. “Doc Graham said something about a ‘vascular spasm.'”

“Never heard of it,” Wash muttered. “Don't tell Jeanne.”

“Don't need to. But it appears you've got one, and I aim to fix it.”

Mrs. Rose, he thought hazily, was a singular woman.

“Thanks,” he murmured. The last thing he remembered was gulping down the bitter tea.

Hours later he woke up when a gentle hand drew the cloth from his eyes, freshened it in cool water and replaced it.

“Supper over?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“Your grandson see to my horse?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

Wash drew in a long breath of dust-free air and realized his head no longer ached. His mind felt fuzzy and slow, as if he'd downed too many shots of whiskey in too short a time. But what the hell? He'd felt unfocused like this before, like that night with Jeanne after the Jensens' dance.

Thinking about that made him feel good inside and then sent a needle of agony through his eyeballs.

Thinking about leaving town in a few days made his gut hurt.

A hand again set a mug on his chest and steadied it against his curved palm. He breathed in the smell of coffee and couldn't help smiling.

“Thanks, Mrs. Rose. You sure know what a man needs when he's down.” It
was
Mrs. Rose, wasn't it?

He heard a sniff and then the click of the door as it closed.

Didn't matter what she thought; he'd been ambushed by a temporary weakness and he was grateful for her attention. A cup of coffee was a small thing, maybe, but at the right time it sure meant a lot. By Jupiter, he sure admired a woman's intuition.