Anita Mills (16 page)

Spence swung up beside her and took the reins, slapping them against the mule’s flank. “You don’t do anything you’re told, do you? You could’ve been pulled from that seat by letting them get so close.”

“Well, I wasn’t.”

“Most of ‘em couldn’t tell a decent woman from a hussy.”

“I’ve heard more swearing from you than anybody else. Did you find out about the cabin?”

“He said it’d need a lot of work to make it livable. Apparently the old hermit trapper didn’t spend much time there, or if he did, it was a long time ago.” He pulled a piece of paper from his pocket, studied it a moment, then put it back. “Unless I’ve mistaken the direction, it’s just over that hill over there.”

“I don’t see any wagon tracks.”

“There isn’t any road, he said, cornering the wagon.

A wheel struck a rock, shifting the furniture in back, nearly unseating her. “This can’t be right—I’d like to look at that map, if you don’t mind.”

“You don’t think I can read? I just looked at it, and if the place isn’t right up there, Hawthorne can’t draw.”

The old wagon was shaking as though it’d be going to pieces any minute. She could almost feel her teeth rattle as the rusty iron-covered wheels clattered over rocks. “Did he say anything else about the place?”

“Yeah—it’s not fit for pigs.”

“What? Oh, now, that can’t be right. When Mr. Russell told Jesse about it, he—”

“There it is, he said, cutting her off. “Take a look for yourself.”

She didn’t see much of anything except grass-covered rocks and a bare board shack farther up the hill. “Oh.”

He reined in, reached beneath the seat for his shotgun, then jumped down. “Wait here until I see how many rattlesnakes live in it.”

Holding onto the frame of the wagon, she gingerly climbed down. “Wait up!”

Coming back to take her arm, he directed her toward the almost square structure. “Well, it’s not canvas and it’s got walls that won’t flap in the wind, but that’s about all I can say good about it, he observed. When he looked down, the expression on her face turned his irritation into sympathy. “I’ll take you back,” he said gently.

She wouldn’t cry. She was made of sterner stuff, she told herself as she stared at it. Squaring her shoulders, she sighed audibly. “I’d better see what it looks like inside before I make up my mind between it and a tent,”

She was a game one, he’d give her that. “All right, but it’s only got one advantage I can .think of.”

“I’d like to hear it.”

“Not too many drunks will be climbing up here.”

“Yes, that is something, isn’t it?” Feeling as though she’d had the wind knocked out of her, she began walking toward the shack. “It does look isolated.”

“I guess it was like this when the government ceded the land to the railroad. Hawthorne thought maybe it’d been empty for years before that, because a receipt for pelts he found in there was dated 1848. He thought maybe the trapper died up in the mountains.”

“Or Indians found him.”

“Yeah.” He tried the door and found it shut. “Door’s swelled some.”

“That’s better than leaking air—it can be planed down enough to make it fit.”

Throwing his shoulder against it, he forced it open and cautiously stepped over the threshold into a dark room. The sun outside cast a wedge of light from the door halfway across a dusty, uneven floor. There was a musty odor hanging in stale air. As he took another step, something loose wobbled under his boot.

“Looks like instead of using planks, he cut some tree trunks crosswise, then just laid the pieces down and filled the gaps between them with clay.”

“It’s a puncheon floor. A lot of poor folks have them out here to keep the snakes and digging varmints out.”

She couldn’t see much beyond that slice of light. He struck a match, then held it up. Particles of dust floated around the steady flame.

“I’d say you don’t have to worry about the wind unless there’s a storm,” he observed. “But he sure wasn’t much for sunlight, was he?” he added, directing her attention to the two small windows. “Looks like maybe he had paper or oilcloth there before somebody nailed boards up.”

“I can order some glass. Supply wagons come out from the end of the line every other week.”

As the flame burned down to his fingers, he dropped the match and stepped on it. Lighting another one, he looked at her. “Now that you’ve seen it, you don’t want to stay here, do you? All you’ve got to cook on and heat with is that hearth, and you’ll have to carry wood up that hill to do it, he pointed out. “And if it comes a hard winter, you’ll have a hell of a time getting anywhere with a new baby—you know that, don’t you? It’s going to be cold and damned lonely, too.”

“Yes.”

“I don’t see how you’ll manage.”

“I’ve got Dolly. If I have to, I’ll ride down to camp.”

“What are you going to do if a war party comes through?”

“I can make enough of a ruckus to get the folks down there up here. You can hear Jesse’s Sharps for miles.”

“As bad as it is, you’re going to stay here?”

“I’m going to stay here.”

“You know, Mrs. Taylor, there’s a fine line between determination and folly.”

“I’m not going back to North Carolina to be a charity case, Dr. Hardin. I’m going to get through the winter here, and come spring, maybe I’ll have a better notion of what I can do. Right now, I’m just trying to fix it in my mind that Jesse’s gone and he’s never coming back.”

“I’m sorry,” The words seemed woefully inadequate when he considered what she faced, but he didn’t have any others. “I’ll take Clyde down and see if I can get some help moving your things in for you.”

“Thank you.”

She was in for a lot of backbreaking work before the place was fit to live in, but she was so determined to take care of herself that nothing he’d said had made any difference. He’d done what he’d said—he’d gotten her here—and he needed to move on. He had too many problems of his own to take on any more, he told himself as he untied his horse. He and Jesse were more than even now, anyway.

As he rode down the hill, she opened the door wider, letting in the chilly September wind to air out the place, then sat on the puncheon floor, making a list of what she’d need in her mind. Window glass. Kerosene. Whitewash. Lime. Cloth for curtains. Rags for a rug. Enough soap to last until she could make some. Two big washtubs. More rope for a clothesline. Wood for the winter. Pausing to stare into the empty room, she told herself if she kept busy enough, maybe the future wouldn’t seem so bleak, maybe she wouldn’t feel so terribly alone.

“Yeah.” He grasped the saddle horn and stepped into the stirrup. Pulling himself up, he threw his leg over Clyde’s back, then eased his body into the saddle before he looked down to her. “I wish I could say the same for you. I still think you’re making a mistake, and you ought to go back to North Carolina while you still can.”

“I don’t know how many times I’ve told you I’ll be all right—I may be a woman, but that doesn’t make me a quivering coward,” she declared firmly.

The wind whipped tendrils of hair loose, softening the effect of the bun that hugged the back of her head. Call it courage, or call it foolhardiness, she had a lot of grit—he had to give her that. Any woman he’d ever known would be scared to be in her shoes right now, and with good reason. With a wife like Laura, Jesse’d had everything to live for, but he hadn’t. It didn’t make much sense, but then nothing did anymore.

“I sure hope so, anyway,” he said finally. “If anything happens to you, I’m going to feel responsible for leaving you alone out here.”

“If you get back this way, stop in, and I’ll fix supper,” she offered. “I’ll still be here come spring.”

He nodded. “Maybe I’ll have my boy with me. I’m hoping to find him once I get to San Francisco,”

“I’d like to see him. Danny gave me a partiality for little boys.”

“Yeah.” Lifting his eyes to the sky, he frowned. “Looks like it could rain, so I’d better get on the road. I’d hoped to be in Laramie long before now.”

“You should have gone on, but I can’t say I’m sorry you stayed to drive my wagon over here. Jesse said you have a good heart, and you surely do.”

Reaching under his coat, he pulled out the wad of banknotes, and peeled off fifty dollars. “Here—it’s not much, but maybe it’ll help you until you can get on your feet.”

“I couldn’t take your money, Dr. Hardin. I’ve got enough to get by.”

“You’re a bad liar, Mrs. Taylor. Go on—take it. If you don’t need it, then save it for the baby.”

She shook her head. “You don’t know what you might run into between here and California, so you’d better keep it.”

“No, I’ve got plenty. There’s not many places after Laramie for me to spend it, anyway.”

“You may find yourself wintering with the Mormons, you know.”

“Look—count it as a loan,” he coaxed, leaning down to hand her the money.

“I still can’t take it.”

“Why not?”

“It wouldn’t be right.”

“Damn it, woman!” he snapped. I don’t have time to sit here arguing with you!”

“Then don’t. I’m not asking you to, you know.”

He regarded her upturned face balefully for a moment, then dropped the money at her feet. When she didn’t pick it up, he told her, “I’m leaving, so unless you want to watch it blow away, you’d better put it in your pocket.”

“I guess it’ll just have to blow, then.”

He swore a string of epithets under his breath, cursing her soundly before he managed to grit out aloud, “Look, I figure I owe Jesse for helping me out back in Carolina. He’d want you to take it.”

She shook her head. “No, Jesse wasn’t one to take charity—ever. He earned everything he ever got. Besides, I can’t repay you,” she told him. “If I thought I could, maybe it’d be different, but I can’t. And fifty dollars is a lot of money for you to be giving away, especially since you’ll probably be needing it more than me. I haven’t even touched his last railroad pay yet.”

“How much was it?”

“Enough for me to get by on.”

“That’s not what I asked, Mrs. Taylor.”

Sighing, she relented. “All right—not that it’s any of your business, mind you, but Mr. Russell gave me the fifty-two dollars pay and the crew collected another nineteen, so that made it seventy-one dollars. And that doesn’t include twenty I’d already saved up for when Jesse couldn’t work this winter. Now that ought to tell you I don’t need any charity yet.”

“Ninety-one dollars,” he said, shaking his head.

“Liddy spent more than that on one change of clothes.”

“Well, I wasn’t raised that way, and I’m not Lydia, so I don’t have any right to take your money. I don’t have any claim on you at all.”

Confounded by her logic, he looked heavenward for patience, then tried again .to reason with her. “Look—I don’t have time to argue anymore. I’ve got to get to San Francisco, but I don’t feel right leaving you to fend for yourself in this godforsaken place. That money’s a salve to my conscience, because I know I should’ve hauled you back to Fort Kearny and made you get on that train.”

“Oh, for—when you get a notion fixed in your mind, you just don’t let go of it, do you?” Her eyes scanned his face, taking in those sober blue eyes, the set of his jaw, and she realized he was stubborn enough to mean it. “Well, she decided finally, “I guess you’d just sit up there all day to win, so I’m going to take your money to make you happy. But if you come back this way next spring, I don’t want you to be too surprised if I’ve still got every penny of it waiting for you.” Bending over awkwardly, she retrieved the bills. As she straightened up, she added, “I just want you to know I still· don’t think it’s right for you to be giving me fifty dollars.”

“It makes me feel better,” he assured her.

“But you’ve got to let me do something for you—you wait here, and I’ll be right back. Don’t you go off until I give you something to take with you.”

“I haven’t got time—and I’ve got to travel light!” he called out. “I’ve got to go!”

She turned back to argue, “Well, you’ve got to eat, don’t you? It’ll just take me a minute,”

With that, she ran into the house, leaving him to wait astride an impatient horse. “Easy now, Clyde,” he muttered, pulling the animal up short. Resigned, he sat there, thinking he’d never known any two women as different from each other as Laura Taylor and Lydia Jamison. Like night and day. The only thing they had in common was contrariness, but he’d just about decided that peculiar quality afflicted the whole female sex.

His gaze strayed to the dilapidated trapper’s shack for a moment. She’d be just plain lucky if it didn’t fall down around her before he came back through. Or burn down when hot coals from the broken chimney hit that weather-beaten roof. As he looked at the place, he was angry with Jesse for dying and leaving a young wife in such straits. He’d had no business bringing her out here in the first place, exposing her to the lowest sort of men, leaving her to fend for herself while he’d gone off for weeks at a time. It had been a damned selfish thing to do.

She came out carrying two packages, a small one wrapped in a man’s white handkerchief and a larger, bulkier bundle. Handing them up to him, she said, “There—at least you won’t be having to make a fire between here and Laramie.”

“What’s this?” he asked curiously.

“The big one’s some of Jesse’s shirts and socks, and the little one’s just jelly sandwiches, some pieces of buffalo jerky, and a chunk of cheese. It’s not much for a man of your size to eat, but it’ll at least keep body and soul together.” Taking a step back, she added, know you want to travel light, but I didn’t have anybody else to give the clothes to.”

“Thanks.”

“And I figured if it got cold up there, maybe you’d want to put on more than one shirt under your coat and two pair of socks in those boots.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, you’d better get started,” she told him awkwardly. “And keep your eye out for Indians, because there’s been trouble with the Cheyenne over by Laramie, and once you get past the fort there, there aren’t any soldiers out patrolling the road this time of year. That’s about all I’ve got to say, she said, stepping back. “Good-bye, Dr. Hardin.”