Trail of Kisses (19 page)

“
Would you like this last potato?”
she asked him at supper on their second day of travel after the
storm. It was only a gesture, but maybe it would help.

“
Sure,” he answered.

She stood from her barrel where they ate in
front of their own small fire with Ben instead of sharing a meal
with one of the larger groups and transferred the potato from her
plate to his.

“
Thanks.”

They went on eating in silence. After weeks of
tasting the same bacon and potatoes and stale bread, Lynne hardly
noticed what was going into her mouth anymore.

“
I was thinking of making coffee
in a minute here,” Cade spoke without looking at her. “Think you’ll
want some?”

“
No, thank you. I might just go to
bed,” she said.

“
Suit yourself.”

More silence. If the journey continued on like
this, Lynne wouldn’t need the Briscoe Boys and their threats to
kill her. Ben was no help either. He did nothing but sit and stare
at the fire, sullen and moody.

When Pete Evans strolled up to their silent
trio, both Lynne and Cade were eager to give him a place to sit and
offer him something to eat.

“
No time.” Pete waved them off.
“I’ve just stopped by to tell you about a game we’re going to be
playing.”

Lynne and Cade exchanged confused looks in
spite of themselves.

“
A game?” Cade asked.

“
Yeah,” Pete said without any joy.
“That tornado really did a number on people’s morale. The mess with
the miners hasn’t helped much either.”

Lynne’s face and neck went red and hot, though
whether from embarrassment or indignation at Mr. Evans’s comment,
she wasn’t sure.

“
What kind of game is going to fix
that?” Cade asked.

At first Lynne thought she heard Mr. Evans
mumble, “Hell if I know.” He cleared his throat and said, “It’s a
giving game. One of the farmers’ wives came up with the idea
because so many folks lost things in the tornado.”

“
A giving game?” Lynne sat
straighter.

“
Yep. Mrs. Marshall is gonna start
it tonight by giving something to someone in need. Then that person
will give something they have to someone else who needs it, and
they’ll give something else to the next person in need.” He crossed
his arms and shook his head, but by the faint glint in his
travel-hardened eyes, Mr. Evans liked the idea. “That way everyone
who’s lost something will gain something new and those folks who
have lots to share won’t feel uncomfortable about what they’ve got,
or so I’m told.”

Lynne opened her mouth to reply just as Cade
said, “It sounds like a good idea to me,” taking the words right
out of her mouth. He glanced to her and she pressed her lips into a
tight line.

“
So that’s all starting tonight,”
Mr. Evans went on. “Just wanted to let you know. I’ve got to tell
everyone else, so you take care.”

“
Thank you, Mr. Evans,” Lynne
rushed to get the last word in this time. She peeked at Cade to see
if he had been in the middle of speaking this time as she had been
before. She got a short, sharp thrill when it looked like he had. A
piece of her worry settled back into calm.

“
Oh, one other thing.” Mr. Evans
turned for a final word, looking to Lynne. “You’re friends with
Miss Emma Sutton, aren’t you?”

“
I am.” Lynne nodded.

“
Just thought you should know that
when I told her and her mama that there’s an abandoned way station
along the path that we’ll probably cross tomorrow, her mama decided
that Emma and her and Dr. Meyers should stop and rest there for a
few days or weeks, until the next wagon train comes along. So
they’ll be staying behind. My man Ike knows enough doctoring to get
us through the rest of the journey.”

“
Oh.” Lynne was surprised at the
strength of the disappointment that grabbed hold of her. “Thank you
for letting me know.”

“
Ma’am.” Mr. Evans tipped his hat,
then moved on.

Several more minutes of silence followed
before Cade said, “I’m sorry about your friend.”

“
She’s only injured,” Lynne
replied, standing and beginning to clear up their supper things. “I
have half a mind to ask if she’d like me to stay behind with her,
but—”

“
No.” Cade shook his
head.

“—
but
,” Lynne continued
with a sharp, scolding glance, “I’m eager to get to Denver City as
quickly as possible.”

When Cade looked as though he would argue her
point, Lynne pivoted to face Ben.

“
I bet you’re eager to get to
Denver City as well, aren’t you, Ben?”

Ben squirmed on his barrel, frowning. “No,
ma’am.”

Lynne blinked at him. “You’re not?”

The young man’s frown deepened to a scowl as
he stared at the glowing embers of their campfire. “I’m in no
hurry. Not when there’s work to be done here.”

“
If it’s a job you’re after, I’m
sure any of the mines would hire a strong young man like you,” Cade
said.

Ben frowned at him. “Not when I got to go back
home.”

“
To Missouri?” Lynne
asked.

“
Yes, ma’am. It’s where my
family’s from.”

A hitch caught in Lynne’s throat. “And they’re
waiting for you?”

“
Yes’m.”

Her family was waiting in St. Louis, but not
for her. They were waiting for her brothers to come home from war,
waiting for the rest of the Briscoe Boys to be caught and punished.
And she had been sent away.

“
That’s very loyal of you,” Lynne
said.

Ben shrugged. “’sides, you’re
here.”

“
Well, then.” She tried to smile,
but could only manage it for a moment. “How sweet of you.” She
cleared her throat. “I think I’ll turn in early.”

“
Lynne, wait.” Cade hopped up from
his seat and followed her to the back of the wagon. “Why don’t you
stay out here and sit with me for a while.”

“
Sit
with you?” she
murmured. “We know where that sort of things leads.”

“
All right, then.” He wasn’t
deterred. “Since you suggested it, why don’t you stay out here and
rest in my arms and kiss me in the moonlight?”

Her heart wanted to leap out of her chest at
the idea of spending the night in Cade’s arms. She turned away
instead.

“
I don’t think that’s such a good
idea. Ben wouldn’t approve.”

Cade made a sound that was something between a
laugh and a snort. “That boy’s silly crush doesn’t hold a candle to
the way I feel about you.”

Lynne lowered her eyes, heart aching. “I
know,” she whispered. “What I don’t know is what to do about
it.”

Wracking her brain to figure out what to do
about it kept her from falling asleep for hours. What alternatives
did she have? If she gave in to her heart and let herself get close
to Cade, she would be a coward who hid behind a man. And if she
didn’t? If she didn’t, she would be a fool.

The next morning dawned cheerfully. The mood
in the wagon train had already started to improve as the giving
game began. Lynne saw more smiles than she had all week as they ate
their breakfast, gathered their things, and set out again across
the endless prairie. Her heart seemed to be the only one that was
still heavy. Hers and Cade’s.

They had only just stopped to rest the animals
in the heat of the day beside an abandoned shack that leaned close
to the river when Ben approached her.

“
Ma’am,” he said, shuffling his
feet and holding his hands behind his back.

Lynne finished checking Clover’s saddle and
giving her rump a pat before turning to the boy with a distracted,
“Yes? What is it?”

Ben frowned at his shuffling feet, face
flushed behind his freckles, and drew a half-wilted wild daisy from
behind his back. Without looking at her, he said, “This is for
you.”

In spite of herself and all her worries,
Lynne’s heart warmed. “Really? For me?”

“
Yes’m.” Ben nodded. He peeked up
at her, still not quite smiling. Judging from the way he held the
flower with shaking fingers and darted looks right and left, the
poor thing was nervous.

Lynne took the sad flower and held it to her
nose, pretending to sniff it. She should have been bothered that
the boy had a sweet spot for her, but the kindness of his gift
pushed those thoughts from her mind.

“
Thank you, Ben. I needed
that.”

What would Cade say, she wondered? Hard on the
heels of that thought came the notion that if Cade had been the one
to bring her a flower, she would have smiled twice as wide, been
twice as touched. Her heart would have leapt out of her heart and
sung. Why hadn’t Cade brought her a flower?

She turned toward Clover to give her one last
check.

“
Uh, ma’am,” Ben stopped
her.

She turned to him. “Yes?”

He nodded to the flower. “You’re supposed to
give someone else something now, remember?”

“
Oh. Yes. You’re right.” Her smile
slipped just a little. So much for thinking the boy was doing
something nice for her. It was just a part of the bigger
game.

Still, she wouldn’t let that dampen the spirit
of the gift.

Again she turned back to Clover, and again Ben
stopped her.

“
Ma’am, just thought you might
like to know that your friend Miss Sutton’s getting ready to stay
behind.”

“
Right.” Lynne smiled at him.
“Thank you for reminding me.”

When Ben turned to go, she broke off most of
the stem of the wilted daisy and speared it through the bun at the
back of her neck. Knowing her, she would forget about it and brush
out dried daisy petals in the morning after sleeping on it. Even
that thought made her smile. And it was good to smile
again.

She finished with Clover, then marched to the
back of the wagon. Cade was several yards down the line, helping
Mrs. Sutton move a few boxes of Emma’s things from their wagon to
the beat up shack where they would be staying. He turned and met
her eyes just as she glanced to him. Heat flushed her cheeks, but
she didn’t look away.

A confused expression crossed Cade’s face and
he gestured to the back of his head, then pointed to her. She
couldn’t help it. She patted the daisy in her bun and grinned at
him. When he smiled back, her heart flipped in her chest. It was
deliciously inconvenient, but as she pulled herself up into the
back of the wagon, something settled in her heart. It was almost as
though things were back to normal.

She could give a gift to Emma as part of the
giving game. She would have given her friend something anyhow, but
Ben’s gift reminded her. Lynne had only known Emma a short time,
but she liked the shy young woman immensely. She hoped to stay in
touch with her as she made a life for herself in Denver City and
Emma built one in Oregon. She crawled to her hope chest against the
back of the wagon and lifted the lid to find something that she
wouldn’t mind parting with for her new friend.

Underneath a pile of grass-stained
handkerchiefs and torn lace ruined by the tornado rested a packet
of stationary. She had brought it from home with the intention of
writing to her Papa every day, but with everything that had been
going on since the tornado, since Ft. Kearny, really, she hadn’t so
much as looked at it. She wasn’t sure she had many letters in her
at this point. The gilt-edged paper would be just the gift for
Emma.

She took the packet out, along with the narrow
pencil she’d used to write the few letters she’d already written.
Emma would need Uncle George’s address if they were going to
correspond. She closed the lid of the hope chest and knelt to use
it as a desk. The pencil seemed a bit more worn at the tip than she
remembered it being, and the stationary wasn’t tied as neatly as
she’d left it. In fact, as she untied the bundle and separated a
few pieces of paper, she noticed one folded piece that had dark
writing on the inside. Dark writing and slashes.

She set the pencil down, and when it rolled
off the hope chest and clattered to the wagon bed, she hardly
noticed. With her heart beating in her throat, she opened the
folded piece of her stationary.

In crude, dark letters was written, “For every
Briscoe Boy that hangs, one of you will bleed.” Under the letters
were a series of stick figures with names written beneath: Judge
Tremaine, Robert, Lynne, Graham, Violet, Marie. Each of the stick
figures had a slice in the paper across its neck.

Finally, things were starting to look up
again. Cade finished moving Emma Sutton’s oak chest from her wagon
to the way station shack with Dr. Meyers’ help, grinning over the
way Lynne had smiled when he’d asked about the flower in her hair.
She’d smiled. It had been more than a week since he’d seen her
smile, since she’d smiled at him. He liked it. It gave him hope. It
was a starting place for him to win back all the ground he’d lost.
He even liked the look of the daisy in her hair, although he wished
he’d thought of bringing her one first.